Author's Note: I've decided to loosen up a bit after the seriousness of the last chapter, and so I bring you chibi Shiganshina Trio.

Enjoy~

Chapter 10 Omake: The Trio Is Born

Armin Arlert was a boy of complex and unusual tastes.

He liked learning, for one. He really liked learning.

Armin was born premature, because the womb did not provide the mental stimulation he required as his self-awareness grew. On his second birthday, he refused to accept his uncle's gifts of wordless picture books that he regarded as "demeaning for someone of my intellect." At age five, he put all the classroom toys in his mouth in an attempt to contract chicken pox, because he wanted to observe the disease first-hand.

When he was seven, he was rescued from a burning library. Against his will.

His other hobbies included being very dark and weird. But that's another story.

Now, at age nine, he currently wandered a small wooded area of Wall Maria, not far from the gate that lead to his home in the Shiganshina District. He was doing some recreational studying, collecting plants that matched the sketches of his grandfather's old botany book.

He picked up a small chrysanthemum, smiling to himself. "You have a darker orange than the other flowers, don't you?" He added it to the blank pages of his notebook, and then crushed it to its immortalized death.

He was about to delve deeper into the woods when he heard a cry for help.

"HELP! I'M DROWNING!"

"Huh?"

"MIKASA! HELP ME!"

Armin ran towards the voice, already scanning the trees around him for branches he could use to pull this poor person out.

"Don't worry! I'll save you! Just hang o- huh?"

He stopped at the edge of what had been a shallow pond, one that had dried out due to a recent summer drought. At the center, a dark-haired boy flopped around and cried.

"HELP ME! I'M DROWNING! I CAN'T BREATHE!"

"Um… excuse me?" Armin asked in the loudest small voice he could muster.

The boy paused to see who had interrupted his drowning spell. "What?" he said rudely. "Can't you see I'm drowning?"

Armin stared, wondering if the boy had taken a tumble down the dried pond bed and bumped his head on a rock or something. The boy must have taken his silence for understanding, as he resumed his episode of flapping about and screaming for help.

"Um… Listen, I don't mean to be rude, but… you know you can breathe, right?"

"Don't you lie to me!"

"It's the truth. You're doing it right now. There's nothing for you to drown in."

The boy stopped moving and sighed loudly. "It's not fair. Father says I can't be a fish because I have 'lungs' and not 'gills.'" He got up and began climbing out of the pond bed, resigned to trying again tomorrow. "It's really not fair that I can't have lungs and be a fish."

Armin thought about it. "That's not necessarily true. I read in one of my grandfather's books that there are these fish far beyond the Walls called 'lungfish' that can breathe water and air."

The boy stared. Armin then sighed and scrunched his eyes closed, turned his face, and squeezed his shoulders. The boy tilted his head ever so slightly.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Um..." Armin opened an eye. "Aren't you going to punch me?"

"What for?"

"For teaching you things."

"But I want to learn more."

"What?"

The boy shuffled up close to him, face expressionless and eyes unblinking, yet there was a certain mania about him. "I want to learn more about fish. What other kinds are there?"

Armin loosened his shoulders and stared back at the boy. "For real? You want to learn more?"

"Yes. Tell me."

Armin's face lit up like those fireflies he loved collecting in jars.

"There are lots of other kinds! There are really tiny colorful fish, and there are big grey fish that have sharp teeth and eat other fish… I think they're called 'sharks'… Oh! And there are plenty of non-fish animals that live in water too! Let me tell you about dolphins…"

"… and then he told me our bodies are mostly water."

Haruka was through telling his father all about meeting his new friend, Armin. The three of them were sitting with Mikasa at the dinner table while Carla stirred the pot on the stove.

"I have told you that as well," said Grisha, looking over a newspaper.

"Yes but I like hearing it."

"Thank you for having me over for dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger," said Armin. "I've enjoyed meeting all of you."

"The pleasure is all ours," said Carla over her shoulder, smiling.

Armin smiled back, but then caught Mikasa's eyes. She had not said a word since their introduction, but merely stared at him from across the table.

"Er… Mikasa's not very talkative, huh?"

"She accidentally wrapped her scarf too tight around her face, I'm afraid," said Carla. "She won't let me cut it off."

"Oh… I see."

Grisha put down the newspaper. "That's ridiculous, how is she going to eat?"

"Now now, Grisha, let her express herself."

Grisha straightened out his newspaper and looked at it once more, muttering something about "maladjusted children."

"It makes us so happy to see Haruka with a new friend," continued Carla. "He doesn't bring many children home. They tend to leave because he threatens them a lot, but that's just in his nature."

"Oh that's fine, Mrs. Jaeger, I'm used to threats."

"Armin said he'd help me fill up the pond bed again with buckets later."

"I didn't say that, Haruka."

Haruka turned to his father. "Can we keep this one too?"

"Don't be silly, son. We only have Mikasa because her parents don't want her anymore."

"Actually-"

"Dinner's ready!"

Carla brought the pot to the table and started distributing plates.

"Thank you, Carla, it smells delicious."

"Mmf mf mf mfmf mf mf mf mmf?" asked Mikasa to Armin.

"What did she say?"

"She asked how come we've never seen you at school," said Haruka.

"Oh… well I tend to sit right at the front of class. Most people don't notice me up there… And I spend my recesses at the library. Maybe that's why we've never met before."

"Why don't you sit with us tomorrow?"

Armin was at a loss for words; it could be credited to the unusual gesture of kindness from his peer, or it could have been his witnessing of Haruka shoving his face in his stew a second later. Either way, Armin was now the only child at the table capable of spoken speech.

"This is your life now," said Grisha from behind his newspaper.

The next morning at school, Armin made good on his promise to sit next to Haruka and Mikasa in class.

"So these are your seats, huh?" He joined them where they sat, far back near the windows. "Not bad."

"The animators save money this way," explained Mikasa. "Now that there aren't a bunch of desks and kids to draw behind you, you can be a main character."

"Uh… I'm not sure I want that."

"Why not? You'll be in a lot of official artwork."

"Huh."

"Good morning class!" The teacher walked in and erased yesterday's lesson off the chalkboard. "I trust you're all excited about our school field trip to the farm today?"

The kids muttered their enthusiasm.

"Since we will be learning about crops today, I thought it would be a great idea to teach a lesson about nutrition!" She put up some colorful posters on the chalkboard. "Now, who here gets to eat on a daily basis?"

"This sucks. We've been here three times this year."

The students shuffled up a hill after their teacher, walking to their field trip destination of the nearby farm.

"It doesn't suck that much more than the other places we get dragged to."

"Yeah, especially the blacksmith's."

"Hey at least when we took a trip to the blacksmith's we got free nails!"

"Mine is still up my nose."

"Settle down, kids." The teacher adjusted her glasses as they made their over the hill. "As you know, the farms of Wall Maria are where we get most of our foods. Can anyone name me some examples?"

One boy raised his hand.

"Yes, Gary?"

"Typewriter!"

"No, Gary. Food."

"Bananas!"

"Don't make up words!"

They stopped in front of a large barn and she turned to address them. "Now unfortunately, due to the Wall-wide ban by the religious faction on anything even remotely resembling sex education, we will once again take the censored tour of the animal areas, children."

"Awwww."

"And as such, the school board has given me no choice but to put a muzzle on Armin again so that he doesn't correct anything out loud during the tour."

"You know I'm just going to educate them later!" he stated angrily from the back of the group.

"Armin if I find out that you've educated anyone after this so help me!"

Armin crossed his arms and pouted.

The censored tour was relatively short. After exploring some crops (avoiding those plants which the school may have deemed "phallic"), the guide walked the students to different buildings without actually bringing them inside.

"… and here is the factory where eggs are made." The guide pointed at a shack that had a sign on the side that said "Egg Factory."

"What are the eggs made of?" asked one student.

"Plant proteins and paper mache."

"Neat!"

He then walked them over to a shack marked "Dairy."

"And this here is the barn where our cows stomp milk out of milkberries."

Armin clawed at his muzzle.

"But we can't go in, because they need absolute silence to work."

The kids "Ooooh"ed their awe at this information.

"Mister farmer!" a kid raised his hand. "How are berries made?"

"I'm afraid you're not old enough to learn that," replied the guide with a chuckle, as per protocol of the censored tour.

"Awwww."

"Now, who wants to watch our pigs get slaughtered?"

On the walk back to school, Armin looked down miserably at his "dried milkberry" souvenir that he knew for a fact was just a coffee bean painted white. Not that it stopped Haruka from trying to squeeze liquid out of his with his fingers.

"What I wouldn't give for a decent school," muttered Armin.

"Cheer up, Armin," said Mikasa. "At least you have your books."

He sighed. "I wish we could have field trips like the ones in Sina. They go to places like gardens and museums."

Mikasa gave him a sympathetic look. "I'm sure those are overrated."

"And they probably don't give out milkberries," added Armin. In fact, they gave out priceless gems on little keychains for their backpacks.

It was nearly dusk when the trio left school. They had to stay after class for detention because Armin was caught conducting chemistry lessons in a toilet stall (using the bowl as a beaker), and Haruka was caught in the other toilet stall flushing paper towels down to flood the area. Mikasa was penalized for being in the boys' bathroom as these events transpired.

"I can't believe I got a whole week of detention and Haruka only got one," whined Armin.

"At least Haruka's damage was reversible," said Mikasa.

"There's no way it was real porcelain if it melted that fast."

"It was kind of funny though."

"… Yes, I suppose it was."

"And you did manage to flood the bathroom," added Haruka.

"That wasn't my intention. You should probably take a shower."

"…"

They walked in silence for a bit. They were almost off school grounds when Haruka stopped in front of a building with glass doors.

"Haruka? What's going on?"

He just stood there, staring into the unlit abyss of the hallways.

Armin looked up to see it was the public pool that Haruka was banned from after the "pee incident" his parents had mentioned.

Realizing the problem, Mikasa picked up a rock and hit it against the door near the handle with a loud bang.

"What are you doing?!" Armin did not want any more detention.

"Breaking into the pool."

She banged it against the glass again.

"Stop –STOP." He held his hands up and she stopped with her arm poised for another attempt at breaking the glass. "Here."

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a raggedy, rolled-up piece of cloth. He unfurled it to reveal a row of thin, metal tools inside tiny pockets. He then pulled out two of them, examined them, looked at the door handle, and then swapped one of them for another before getting to work picking the lock.

"There." He heard the clinking sound of the lock, and opened the door to let them in. "If you're going to break the law, at least do it correctly."

"Thank you, Armin."

"Aren't you guys going to question why I carry around a lock-picking kit?" Armin carefully closed the door behind him and followed them.

The two of them shrugged.

"We're sure it's important to you, for whatever reason," said Mikasa.

"Don't tell my parents, okay? Kits like these without any missing pieces are hard to come by, and they've already confiscated a few of them from me."

"Okay, we won't."

The pool was quite eerie after hours. The main hallway had no windows to speak of, so Mikasa had to hold a lit lantern for the three of them. Armin very much disliked how the hallway was not visible beyond the torch light's reach, and how the entrance behind them dwindled into darkness as well. It was though they were inside a small, protective bubble of light in this tunnel of darkness that was only alive with humans during the day.

"It really feels like we shouldn't be in here," he said. "What if it's haunted?"

"Haruka, did you bring the salt?"

"I couldn't. My mom hid it again. She's tired of having no salt after our late night adventures."

"I have some mud in my pocket. We could use that against ghosts instead."

"Why do you have mud in your pocket?"

"I got it for my face. Suzie from math class says it's supposed to be good for it. It 'cleans your spores' or something."

"Why would your spores need cleaning?"

"I don't know. Maybe they're like shelves and they get dusty."

"I roll around in mud all the time, my spores never get cleaned."

"That's 'cause you're a boy, Haruka. You don't have spores."

"Oh."

Armin stared at the both of them. "Do you two need tutoring for science class? I could help you. Let me."

"Haruka and I go through a lot of tutors. We'd like you to stay our friend, Armin."

"… Okay."

They arrived at the large pool area at the end of the hall. They saw the pale surface of the pool emerge under the light of the lantern, but it still extended into a shroud of darkness. Oddly, it was quite still…

Upon closer inspection, they discovered it was full of dried cement.

"Oh that's right." Armin had just recalled something. "They're paving over this area for a carriage lot." Though why they paved the pool before destroying the building was beyond him.

Nonetheless, Haruka had already stripped to his swimsuit and flopped around the middle of the cement pool shouting "I'M DROWNING."

Armin turned to Mikasa. "Do you ever consider putting arm floats on him? At least for the sense of security?"

"He'll chew them right off."

Indeed, the force of a punctured arm float had once sent him flying out the window, down the street, and into a wedding cake for a young woman named Petra Ral, who took it as a bad omen and decided to leave her husband at the altar to join the Survey Corps.

"… and then Mikasa followed us to our house and wouldn't go home."

Later that night, the three of them sat in Haruka's bedroom, Armin having been invited to sleep over. Haruka was just telling him about how Mikasa came into the Jaeger household.

"Mom tried shooing her away with the broomstick but she snuck in through the back door."

"I'm really sorry about your parents, Mikasa," said Armin. "My parents once accidentally sold me to a doll collector when I was a toddler. And then again two years ago."

"Parents are strange," agreed Mikasa. "At least my parents can focus on my brother's modeling career now."

"What about you, Mikasa? What do you want to do when you grow up?"

"I want to be Haruka's wife."

Haruka scowled. "I can't be in the Survey Corps if I'm married to you! That kind of thing never ends well!"

Armin gasped. "You want to join the Survey Corps?!"

"Yes. I want to see the world." Haruka could not express in words how Armin's education about the outside world affected him. (He couldn't express many things in words, but that goes without saying.)

"You do know that they've never made it past fifty miles beyond the Wall, right?"

Haruka threw a pillow at him. It might as well have been the hammer of Thor, though, because it trapped him and Mikasa had to pull it off.

"Thanks."

"…"

"Uh… is everything okay?" For she was looking at him strangely.

"Do you have any allergies I should know about?"

"I have a severe gluten intolerance, actually."

Mikasa made a mental note to add it to her notebook later. It was a special notebook she kept inside her scarf at all times which listed everything that made Haruka prone to death (drills, dry wells, Grisha's medical bag, choking on air, etc.), to which she had added a section for Armin. (His list of things that could kill him was far longer, and included stairs, intersections, sparrows, other children, plastic bags, cleaning fumes, strong winds, tetanus, and now gluten.)

"Er, we should get ready for bed soon. I'll be right back." Armin left to use the restroom.

"Do you think he'll survive into adulthood?" Haruka asked Mikasa hopefully.

"I'm not sure he'll make it out of the bathroom alive."

And they both shared a hearty laugh, one they only expressed whenever they were completely alone.

As he was washing up for bed, Armin could not help but feel a cautions sense of optimism. He admitted they were strange, but he finally found two people whom he could consider "friends."

"And they don't want you around to steal homework off of either," he said to his reflection in the mirror. Haruka and Mikasa had made it clear a while ago that they did not want the teachers to start expecting real work from them (even if they could read the specialized cursive he had invented to prevent others copying his work).

When he returned to the bedroom, he found the two of them with mud slathered on their faces and a plate of sliced cucumbers on the floor between them. From the smell, Armin gathered that Mikasa had acquired the mud from the farm earlier.

"We're cleaning our spores," said Haruka. "You want a mud mask too?"

"It's very relaxing," said Mikasa.

"Uh… I'm good, thanks."

Armin awoke an hour before dawn the next morning, as he was always up extra early for studying before class. Admittedly, he did not sleep well over concern about Haruka slipping directly inside his waterbed to sleep, but Mikasa assured him he would "breathe again in the morning." However, neither Haruka nor Mikasa were to be found in bed when he checked.

"Huh. Do they get up earlier than me?" Even their parents were not up yet.

Armin got out of bed, got dressed, gathered his things, and headed out. They must be at school, he thought. And when he arrived at school, he found he was correct.

The entire faculty, a large group of students, many parents, several passersby, and a handful of members of the Garrison Guard were gathered outside the front of the school.

"Huh? What's going on?" Armin pushed through the crowds to see what had possibly happened to warrant this behavior amongst everyone.

"How obscene," he heard someone say.

"They should expel whoever did it at once."

"How could this happen?"

"Think of the children!"

Armin emerged and his jaw dropped. The walls of the school were covered in crude graffiti of what appeared to be doodles of nude people and suggestive flowers, as well as abstract splatters of paint.

"Psst! Armin!"

"Oh, hi Haruka, hi Mikasa. What's going on? Do they know who did this?"

The two of them looked unusually pleased.

"Do you like it?"

"I… what?"

Haruka's voice was down to a whisper.

"Don't tell on us, okay?"

"What? This was your doing?!"

"Shhhh!"

"We were talking about how you wished you were in a better school in Sina," whispered Mikasa, "with their field trips to museums and all. So we looked through some art books and copied them. This way, you don't have to go to Wall Sina for art."

"What do you think?" asked Haruka.

"… This… you did all this… for me?"

They nodded.

Whenever Armin imagined himself with friends, he envisioned fellow intellects with whom he could spend all his free time at the library. But, he learned something that day. Sometimes friendship was little more than pure, unconditional love. Love that made people do anything to make others happy, including, but not limited to, defacement of school property.

"I love it."

CHAPTER EPILOGUE

Yes, all three of them were expelled.

Author's Note: I did not expect this chapter to produce so much fluff but it did. Also, Mikasa is a little frustrated that she now has two fragile boys to look after.