Chapter Two: Divergence

The sun was spreading vermillion rays across the horizon as Eren and his two friends left the large brick building that housed their school. But that was to be expected, as it was at this time mid-autumn.

Already, the shadows that sliced across Vulpis Trost's small central plaza were deepening, and a small sliver of the moon's surface could just be made out in the darkening sky.

Eren was in a foul mood, as he usually was by the time he finished school. He hated everything about the school, with the exception of his two friends. He hated the teachers, and not just because many of them were far too liberal with their canes; what he hated the most about them was that they acted as if they were barely sentient. They droned on and on, repeating themselves over and over, like some kind of programmed machine. And the worst thing? Despite being Vulpes, they told everything from a Canis perspective. And they weren't even subtle with it. They constantly told the students that they had their place, and nothing could change that; and some even went so far to say that they should be grateful to the Canes for "protecting" them within the walls of the city. They pointed out that it was the same Canis government that had passed a Vulpis Slavery Abolition Act nine decades previously, making Vulpis slavery illegal within the confines of Dreimauer. But, according to Eren's father (who, during his travels to contact patients in different districts, had picked up a few historical facts), the price of that one law had been paid in the blood of almost a million Vulpis lives.

Seriously, are all of them too cowardly to say what they really think and feel? Would they all really rather be manipulated by the Canes… just for a tiny bit of money and a safe, carefree life?

Some people really are as bad as Canes, he mentally spat.

His friends sensed his mood without him even having to say anything. "I know," Armin muttered empathetically. "It's frustrating, and-"

"'-there's nothing we can do about it?'" Eren spat again. "Wrong. You're always able to do something, Armin. It just depends on how much of a risk you're willing to take, how much you're prepared to sacrifice…" By now, his voice was vibrating uncontrollably with sheer passion. "Th… the fact that we're h-helpless… is merely an illusion created by the Canes!" The brunette was practically shouting at this point. "A-and… we… we have the power to fight back, to overthrow them, to rise up! Th-there are more Vulpes outside Wall Sina alone than there are Canes in the entire fucking city of Dr-Driemauer! W-we can do this. E-everyone's just too stupid, or too scared, to see…"

"Eren," Mikasa broke in. "You really need to keep your voice down."

The young Vulpis blinked, emerald eyes panning the plaza. Sure enough, several assorted pairs of eyes were staring in his direction, each carrying a multitude of mixed expressions.

"No way, Mikasa," Eren grumbled. "There's no way there are any Canes here…"

The noirette gave him a pointed look. "Are you sure?"

"Yes!" the young male growled. Though, there was that midget on the train… he was definitely acting strangely. And the more I think about it, the more he seemed to behave as if we were inferior to him. Just like a Canis…

Eren's thoughts were then interrupted by a sudden voice that almost pierced the air with its sharp smugness.

"Oh, if it isn't Sir Sore Posterior and his motley crew!" Jean Kirstein greeted mockingly as he strode up towards them. Despite being the same age as Eren, Jean was at least a head taller – plus half a head if you counted the height of his ears, which poked up from a field of short chestnut hair. As usual, an omnipresent smug grin was pasted over the lower half of his face.

"So, Jeager, I take it you're still failing at life?"

Eren looked away, irritated but otherwise unperturbed. "No, Kirstein, I think you'll find that you're the one who's failing at life."

Jean appeared shocked at this statement. "What do you mean?! You barely ever learn anything. You just spend the entire time trying to act like a little know-it-all and then you just get whipped for it. Well, newsflash! Your future isn't going to get handed to you on a lovely little plate, now is it?" He chortled. "Well, I suppose not all of us are destined for greater things, eh?"

The brunette turned back around to shoot an intense glare at Jean. "What 'greater things'?"

"Oh, you know, the usual," Jean replied haughtily. "I'm going to leave this shitty district once I graduate and go to the interior. Yes, you heard right, Jeager, the fucking interior! I'll get a job – a proper job, mind you, not some slave's work down some mine – and then I'll work my way up. Who knows? Perhaps one day, I could be mayor of my own district!" He burst into arrogant laughter, clearly expecting the other three to be jealous of his ambitions.

"But you do know, right, Jean, that beyond Wall Sina… all mayors are legally appointed by the central government?" Armin pointed out. "And there's no way… there's no way that they'd ever appoint a Vulpis to be mayor… not in such a prestigious area."

"Hah…" Jean averted his gaze, realising his ignorance. "Well, maybe not mayor then, but I'll still be living better than you three, Jeager, Arlert, Ackerman. You three can go back to your shitty agricultural district and pick weeds until your backs break. I'll be living a life of luxury compared to you."

Eren turned away again, not wanting to hear him talk in that infuriatingly smug voice of his with that annoyingly complacent expression. Why is he so smug anyway? He has no reason to be so uptight. He's just like us.

"How can you be so sure?" Eren inquired rhetorically. "What if the interior isn't all it's cracked up to be? What if you find yourself living a life even worse than the one you're living now? And… what if your only reason for living… was simply to be subordinate? To carry out orders for someone else, without getting any say in your own actions whatsoever? That would be no better than slavery."

Without waiting to hear his reply, Eren stormed off, practically sprinting, so his friends had to run to catch up to him. Jean is just like the finishing touch to another shitty day, he silently raged. Dammit all! Why can't they see? They're all being lured into a trap, which they think they're going to benefit from… but really, it's all for the Canes!

He furiously powerwalked onwards, ignorant to everything around him. All he saw was Jean's smug, mocking face, then the robotic expressions of his teachers… and then the disdainful gaze of that black-haired midget he met on the train. "Get out of my sight, you disgusting Vulpis brat," was what that gaze seemed to say. And that notion made Eren's inside's boil to an even more intense heat as fresh waves of rage and hatred emanated through him. I wish I could just kill them all. Just like that…

"Eren!"

Said Vulpis looked up to meet the silvery eyes of his adoptive sister. "Mikasa?" he mumbled detachedly, his rage quieting to a simmer, although it didn't dissipate entirely.

"You need to calm down, Eren." Mikasa spoke each word forcefully and clearly, as if she were a military general stating a brusque order to a bunch of trainee soldiers. "Whenever you're… like this, you get into trouble. You pick fights with others around you whenever you're agitated. You need to learn to control it sometimes. …Eren? Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah," Eren muttered. It was only a partial lie. "Just stop speaking to me like you're my mother, okay?" He turned his back on Mikasa dismissively, feeling the rage building up, racing to consume him once again.

"I'm like… like your mother?!" the noirette intoned, her voice laced with incredulity. "I'm only trying to protect you, Eren, okay? You don't have to-"

"But what if I don't need your protection?" Eren interrupted, his verdant orbs burning fiercely. "What if I don't need you constantly watching over me, dragging me out of every fight I happen to get into? What if I can resolve my own problems just as well without you?"

Mikasa's face remained impassive as always, though Eren thought he saw a glint of moisture in her eye catch the light of the setting sun. "I have a debt to repay you, Eren," she uttered simply. "I promised myself-"

"Well, consider it paid," he responded, a little more sharply and harshly than he intended.

"Er… Mikasa?" Amin intervened rather sheepishly. "Perhaps we should leave Eren alone for a little while… you know, just so he can cool off a little."

Mikasa still seemed reluctant to leave Eren's side, but she followed Armin, albeit not without several rapid glances back towards her brother. "Promise me you won't do anything stupid," she called.

"Eren, we'll be waiting at the train station for you!" chirped Armin's voice.

All too soon, the footsteps of his friends faded to silence as they moved off in the direction of the station. The young Vulpis glanced up, noticing for the first time where he was. He was at a crossroads junction – it wasn't much to look at really, with the dirty cobbles underfoot, the disintegrating wooden buildings arranged in a rough circle and a dried-up, misshapen fountain in the centre.

He knew where he was, roughly. There were two routes he could take to Trost Central Station, one of which Mikasa and Armin had already taken. He decided to take the alternate route back. Feeling a twinge of guilt at his outburst earlier whilst simultaneously remembering the incident that had brought them together, he felt too ashamed to catch up to his sister just yet. And so he walked straight onwards.

As he traversed the cobbled roads, avoiding clattering horse-drawn carriages (though Eren wasn't sure if they could really be called horses, as the best horses available to the Vulpes were not much larger than ponies), he never once felt his anger and frustration recede. In fact, it only intensified.

Simply "cooling off" won't do any good. I need to… I need to do something!

But what? Now that was the question. What could he realistically do against the Canes, as one person, to show the bitterness and hatred he felt towards them? A few possibilities came into his mind, but he quickly dismissed them all. It was no use rallying other Vulpes against them. They would never agree to an uprising – they were all too craven to even think of such a thing. Nor did he have the means or the know-how to disrupt the Canes' lives from afar.

What else is there…?

Eren turned his gaze upwards from the cobbles to meet with the sight of an imposing iron fence, its bars painted a hue darker than an eclipsed star. Atop the fence, which stood over seven metres high, pinwheels of barbed wire and malicious spikes deterred even the most talented climber from scaling the barrier.

It was then that he realised just how far he had walked. He had been traveling for almost an entire mile from the crossroads to the boundary fence, completely enshrouded in his thoughts.

The young Vulpis's emerald gaze dropped until he stared right through the bars of the fence.

Beyond the silvery-sheened train tracks and discoloured, dirty gravel, a narrow sliver of scenery could be seen. Within, Eren thought he caught a glimpse of an extravagant, gilded fountain acting as the centrepiece for an opulent plaza. Flowerbeds were arranged among verdant greenery in an artistic fashion, with not a petal or leaf out of place. His acute sense of smell picked up the aroma of a nearby bakery – edible, fresh and unadulterated. His mouth subconsciously watered at the scent.

The Canis side of town…

Unbidden, a thought entered Eren's head. It was the sort of notion that most others would dismiss as ridiculous and reckless. But for Eren Jaeger, in his extremely frustrated and aggravated mood, the prospect seemed very inviting indeed.

So, without even taking a second to think twice about it, Eren willed his body to transform.

Within moments, a thick coat of umber fur began to sprout from every follicle on his body. His face completely morphed, his nose developing into a pointed snout, and his hands and feet contracted into paws. As he changed, Eren rapidly shed his clothes, tossing them aside uncaringly. He then dropped to all fours as his canines elongated, his skeletal structure readjusted and whiskers protruded from his cheeks.

His large, fluffy tail and pointed ears remained the same, but everything else had changed drastically. Now in his full "Vulpic" form, with a slender and rather streamlined physique, Eren felt ready for an invasion.

It didn't take him very long to find a chink in the fence's armour. The ground under the fence was soft and uneven, so Eren found the soil gave way easily under his claws. His highly-attuned Vulpic senses meant that the smell of the bakery now all but filled his nose. Focusing on his rage, hatred and desire to inflict suffering upon the Canes, the Vulpis then transformed those emotions into the energy he used to keep digging. In less than two minutes, he had excavated a wide tunnel that emerged clean on the other side of the fence. Leaping across the train tracks on nimble Vulpis legs that contracted and expanded like elastic, Eren dashed on, unperturbed, as the ground rattled beneath him; in this form, it was a merely a small feat to outrun a passing train.

Said train thundered past as Eren ground to a halt on the other side of the tracks. But he was oblivious to the chugging vehicle; his eyes and mind were fixated completely on the sights and smells of the world just beyond the fence, now that it was barely a metre away. The rich scent of the bakery was now so powerful that Eren salivated almost uncontrollably. His Vulpic eyes took in the fine architecture, the blooming flowerbeds, the neatly-pruned trees and the marble paving stones that seemed to glimmer golden in the evening light.

Those bastards…

Why should they get to live like this…

…when so many of us are on the brink of starvation and sleeping in our own filth?

Eren had seen enough. He wanted to tear this entire district down – bulldoze it and then smother it, and then do the same to all the Canes within it.

He dug his claws into the ground.

The plaza was full of Canes dashing to and fro from Trost Central Station – some dressed in tail-coated business suits or uniforms, others in extravagant, silken gowns – but not one of them noticed Eren as he scrambled in the dirt, frantically digging as though his life depended on it.

And then, an umber blur shot through the crowd, so quickly that many of the spectating Canes dismissed it immediately as their imagination. But they revoked that notion as a shrill scream pierced the air.

The scream was a mixture of terror, shock, and pain; all emanating from the glossy, rouged lips of a female Canis in an intricately-decorated gown finished with jewels and finery. A young child, presumably her daughter, clung to her side, looking up with wide eyes at the dark chocolate-brown Vulpis who had attached himself to the mother's forearm by his jaws.

Eren applied more pressure to his victim's arm, shuddering as he heard the satisfying crunch of fracturing ligaments, followed up by an intense howl of pain.

Many of the surrounding Canes backed away in disconcertion and confusion, but several others leaped to their fellow Canis's aid. One of them grasped Eren by the back legs and tried desperately to pull him off, but the stubborn Vulpis clung on, digging his canines into Canis flesh. Another approached with a carved wooden cane and a forbidding expression on his face. As he brought back his arm to deliver a blow to Eren's skull, the Vulpis finally released his grip.

Landing deftly on all fours, he didn't waste a single second as he slashed at the legs of nearby Canes, splitting fabric and spilling blood, before dodging out of his assailants' range. As they chased him, shouting obscenities, Eren dashed across the flowerbed, uprooting plants with a flick of his paw.

In every direction, chaos reigned among the Canes as they tried to flee or desperately grabbed the nearest object that they could use as a weapon. They directed their yells and screams at each other, at Eren, and at no-one in particular; but the renegade Vulpis had no care for what they said. In fact, the only things he registered were the adrenalin coursing through his veins, and his hunger for Canis blood, which was still not yet sated.

I want to kill them all… Every single fucking one of them. For what they did to me, to my family, to Mikasa, to everyone…

A sharp crack echoed across the plaza. Barely a millisecond after Eren's attuned ears picked up the sound, pain exploded in his left shoulder, causing his left foreleg to give way underneath his body. He collapsed onto his side, the sudden, intense pain darkening his vision. However, he managed to stay conscious, just barely. He was about to attempt to stand, but a great weight above him managed to pin him down before he could do so.

Frantically twisting his body around, Eren emitted a sharp, guttural growl of agony as he met with the brownish-green eyes of a huge Canis. The large male was in his full Canic form, his teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. Brown fur a few shades darker than Eren's covered his entire body, particularly at his thick, muscular legs and short, upright tail.

"That's enough. Stand down, Bertolt. He's not going anywhere."

At the sound of the coldly emotionless, feminine voice, the Canis known as Bertolt rather reluctantly withdrew, sitting back on his haunches as if in anticipation of another order.

It was only then that the owner of the voice hovered into view; a uniform-clad Canis with neatly-kept pale blonde hair pinned in place behind her head. She stared down at Eren through icy blue eyes that held no emotion whatsoever. The rest of her pale face, however, exuded pure disgust and contempt for the Vulpis lying beneath her.

She was surprisingly short for a Canis, yet still imposing; particularly as she aimed the barrel of a still-smoking musket at Eren's head. Having been oddly reminded of the dark-haired imposter of his previous train journey, Eren returned the Canis girl a repulsed glance, trying his best to ignore the haze of pain descending upon his vision.

"Well. It's true I don't see many Vulpes around these parts," she stated, almost casually, as if she were simply making polite conversation; though her eyes and tone remained deadpan. "But I'll have to deal with you, nonetheless."

As the blonde Canis's finger slid over the trigger of her firearm, Eren's eyes suddenly registered the insignia upon her shoulder. It was difficult to make out initially through his blurred vision, but there was no mistaking it.

A green unicorn.

Eren's mind computed what this meant just as the trigger was pulled: that this girl, and possibly her accomplice too, were members of the governmental, all-Canis organisation that kept law and order running throughout Dreimauer. The Military Police Brigade.

But before he had time to think of anything else, the bullet impacted on his body, and his world dissolved into pain.