Author's Note: I kind of imagine Haruka Jaeger looking like Free!'s Haruka but with Eren's messy brown hair and constant scowl. How has everyone else been envisioning him? o3o
(Slight trigger warning for some gore in this chapter)
Chapter 11: Kapitel Elf
Rico and her remaining squad fought a losing battle.
The Titans advanced from all directions with an especially vigorous purpose, as though they somehow knew of the plight humanity faced with this tide-turning battle. The task of recovering Haruka, or the District of Trost for that matter, seemed out of reach.
"You think we could smoke him out of there?" asked one of her more inexperienced subordinates, in hopes of helping with Haruka's situation. "Like with bees?"
"Mindy, why don't you go assist the rearguard and stop wasting my time."
"Yes, Ma'am!"
Rico turned to Mikasa and the others. "Listen, we have to withdraw for now, we can't-" she realized Mikasa was staring at something in the distance.
"Look at all that steam…"
Rico turned her head to see. Sure enough, between several buildings, a large cloud of steam undulated in the wind. "Ah, it appears the Titans broke into the sauna."
"The Military Police will be devastated," said Ian. "That's where they held their meetings outside of Sina."
"Yes, they will be most displeased when they arrive here." Which would be never.
"Wait… what's that?" Elsewhere in the distance flowed another thick tower of steam. Within it, a dark shadow carried something big over its head. Could it be…?
"Haruka!" Mikasa shed tears for the second time that day. "He picked up the rock! He did it!"
The steam enveloped him from top to bottom, but there was no mistaking it; Haruka had gained control of his Titan and commenced the plan to block the gate with the rock.
"Mikasa!" Armin ran towards her, having narrowly avoided being stepped on by Haruka's Titan. "Haruka's finally doing his part! We have to guide him to the gate!"
Ian turned to the men and women of his squad. "PROTECT HIM WITH YOUR LIVES!" With this newfound development, Ian knew that they had been gifted with the opportunity of a short, short lifetime and he would not let it slip between his bloodied fingers. "WE WILL GET HIM TO THE GATE EVEN IF IT'S THE LAST THING WE DO!"
It would be the last thing they did.
"You two," he turned to Mikasa and Armin. "Get down there! Make sure his path is clear!"
"Yes, sir!"
"What's that over there?" A soldier pointed to the ground behind the Titans in front of them.
Armin squinted through the ash and dust to make out a figure running towards them. "Is that… Is that Rei!?"
"Mikasa! Armin!" shouted Rei.
"Rei? What the hell are you doing? You'll die if you engage them on the ground like that!"
"Some asshole stole my gear while I was hiding under debris and pretending to be dead!"
"Are you okay!?"
"Yes!"
The Titans slowly turned their heads and spotted Rei.
"Trainee Ryugazaki!" shouted Ian. "I'd turn the hell around and run if I were you!"
"'Trainee'?" Rei glared beneath the soot on his face, running his hands through his disheveled hair and paying no heed to his half-broken glasses. "Are we all still ranked as trainees after this? There are high-ranking Military Police elites who haven't seen as much bullshit in their lives as I've seen in the past five minutes!"
"Ryugazaki-"
Rei pointed to his left, his speech becoming more and more high-strung with each word. "You want to know where Mitabi's Team is right now!? Sprayed all over 5th street like some demented holiday decorations! It's a good thing our humble District of Trost doesn't have Sina's elaborate streetlamps otherwise the entrails would be much harder to remove! I can't wait to be assigned cleaning duty after this if I don't die a disgusting death first!"
"For the love of – we can discuss this later!"
"He's right, Rei!" yelled Armin, watching the Titans amble towards Rei. "You have to run!"
"What the hell do you think I've been doing!?" and he turned tail and sprinted away in perfect running form, leading the Titans away from the soldiers and Haruka.
"What's that?"
"Do you see that?"
"No way!"
The recruits of the 104th training squad and several other soldiers on the wall spotted Haruka's Titan carrying the rock in the distance, looking for all the world like an overachieving ant under a ridiculously large crumb.
"Come on, guys!" shouted Jean. "We can't let the Titans stop him! Let's protect Haruka!"
His colleagues reacted with cheers and whoops before flinging themselves off the wall.
Jean turned to Sasha. "Sasha! Give me your gear!"
"What?"
"Quick! I need it! Mine broke!"
"What about me!?"
"You can ride with Ymir!"
"Wha – wait!"
Jean detached her gear and jumped off to follow the others in their Titan pursuit.
Sasha glanced at Ymir, who smirked at her.
"Uhhhhh…"
Ymir strolled over to Sasha and whispered in her ear, "I like eating, too."
"I – you know, maybe I'll ride with Annie instead."
"You have no use to me on the battlefield, Sasha."
"Er… Krista?"
"I would, Sasha, but I'm already carrying humanity's burden."
"Mikasa?"
"Mikasa's not here."
"Ughhhh fine."
"Wow Ymir… I never realized how muscular you are!" Sasha never would have thought she'd feel this safe and secure zooming around Trost on Ymir's back.
"Thanks, Sasha," cooed Ymir. "And I never realized what thick thighs you have."
"Oh, you!" she giggled.
Krista zipped up to them, flushed. "Ymir, if you're still mad about last week… I was just going over to the boys' barracks to give Reiner his jacket back."
"And what were you doing with Reiner's jacket, exactly?"
"He lent it to me because it was cold and rainy!"
"Oh sure! He lent it to you! What's next, he lends you his pants?"
Krista blushed. "That only happened once!"
"What!?"
"There was a training incident in our group once, and Samuel needed a tourniquet or he would have died-"
"WE ARE LITERALLY ALL COVERED IN BELTS, WHY WOULD YOU-"
"Ymir, your jealousy is both childish and unfounded-"
"SO HE JUST SAUNTERED AROUND YOU IN HIS UNDERWEAR AND HIS HAIRY LEGS, DID HE-?"
"- and not to mention you constantly flirt with everyone else! Isn't that right, Sasha!? … Sasha?"
"She fell off eight blocks ago but you're missing the point-!"
"WHAT!?"
"How am I supposed to trust you when you insist on being nice to other people-!"
"Oh my god Ymir we have to go get her!"
"She's fine."
When Sasha had fallen off Ymir, she knocked into Annie and they both spiraled out of control before crashing through a window and into a shop that sold cacti and jars of salt, inexplicably. So, no, she wasn't fine.
Haruka's Titan body felt pressured between the huge boulder and the concrete ground, its muscles bulging beneath its skin-tight swimsuit. He used every ounce of the Titan's strength to not collapse, shattering and sinking into the streets below with each step he took as though he were trudging through a thick layer of snow.
I feel… like my body's going… to break apart…
Heavier still were the screams of dying soldiers that reached his ears.
Have to… focus… Can't… stop now…
Through the Titan's eyes, Haruka spotted Armin and Mikasa glancing backwards at him before running ahead to clear his path of the other Titans.
Mikasa… Armin… What are you doing?…
He desired nothing more but to put the rock down and protect his two best friends.
Don't… please… They'll eat you… and you're … irreplaceable…
Not that he had never tried. There had once been a period during their training in which Mikasa and Armin ignored Haruka for a few days to punish him for leaving Armin alone at the market square, where lost children were put in crates and sold off to couples who had lost their children at other marketplaces (it was a good thing Armin had had his lock-picking kit). Unbeknownst to either of his friends, Haruka had tried convincing Annie and Krista to replace them (Annie because her stoic attitude reminded him of Mikasa's, and Krista because, in his mind, she and Armin were interchangeable). He managed to bribe Krista into following him around using cookies, but Annie proved far more difficult. He would follow her around, hurting himself near her in hopes of a doting reaction from her. Irritated, Annie finally shoved him inside a porta-potty and pushed it down a hill, making it clear that she made a poor substitute for Mikasa. Krista eventually left too, out of frustration from Haruka that she couldn't read either.
I can't do this… this is too much…!
"Haruka…" Armin's face emerged in Haruka's mind's eye. "Why do you want to see the outside world?"
The Titan's eyes teared. Because we were all… born free…
With each of his footsteps, another soldier died for him.
Because we should fight… those who try to take our freedom…
Mikasa resisted the urge to go back and save Ian from being eaten and stayed by Haruka's side, tears running down her face.
The world out there might be cruel… but no matter what… we have to… just keep swimming…
Rico killed the last Titan in Haruka's way, and the broken gate stood only a few meters from him. It was really happening… they were going to win…
"GO, HARUKA, GOOOO!" screamed Armin.
Reaching the broken gate, the Titan lifted the enormous rock over its head with a victorious roar and… miscalculated its center of gravity and fell backwards, the rock crushing it. Haruka's body squirted out of its neck like a popped zit.
All of humanity present in Trost simultaneously face-palmed. It cost some of them their lives.
"Right," said Rico. "Plan B!"
A soldier zipped over to the broken gate. "Initiating Phase 1!" he shouted.
"There's only one phase in this plan, idiot!" Rico shouted in return.
The recruit pushed the big red button near the entryway that was captioned with the words "PRESS IN CASE OF TITAN BREACH." An alarm sounded, some red lights flashed, and a six-foot thick steel door emerged from the top of the hole in the shattered gate and descended to cover the gaping breach.
"YES!"
"WE DID IT!"
Rico collapsed and cried, completely forgoing her stoic demeanor. She sent up the yellow smoke signal that indicated mission success.
Armin wondered whether he should push the button to reverse the door, let humanity fade away to give someone else in this world a chance… If he had bothered to inspect the gate closer, he would learn that the emergency steel door did have a reverse button, but at least the engineers exercised caution when they installed it out of the reach of children.
"Let's withdraw!" shouted Rico. "Hurry up and recover the Titan kid!"
Armin and Mikasa rushed towards where Haruka landed… only to find that Haruka's unconscious, burning hot body had landed atop a warehouse and burned through it, leaving the building on fire with a Haruka-shaped hole on its roof.
"It must be the body heat from his Titan!" said Armin, grabbing his own hair in despair. "What do we do?! I can't see him!"
"We don't have time for this!" Rico positioned herself near the hole and prepared to spear it. That's what she said.
Mikasa made to stop her. "Haruka doesn't like being harpooned-"
Rico pulled the trigger, speared Haruka, and reeled him in. The three of them then pulled away from the building and laid him on his back on the ground, not quite certain if he was still alive anymore.
Armin crouched down near Haruka and lifted his head. "Haruka! Are you okay? Answer me!"
"Throw me back," he murmured.
"Shit! We've got company!"
Mikasa and Armin turned their heads to see what Rico had spotted; two 15-meter class Titans staring down at them. The buildings were too far away to make a quick escape. Mikasa stood up, but before she could attempt the dangerous head-on attack, one of the Titans' necks exploded in a slash of blood… then the other… He was almost too fast for Mikasa and the others to see him in the ashen air and diminishing sunlight, but he landed on the shoulder of one of the collapsed Titans.
Delirious, with one eye swollen, Haruka made out the vague shape of a crest. "The wings… of freedom…"
Mikasa and Armin stared in awe at the back of this diminutive man with the perfectly pressed Survey Corps uniform. Captain Levi glanced over his shoulder at them, doing the bare minimum to disrupt his magnificent pose facing the wind and setting sun.
"They wouldn't let Erwin do this," he said. "He'd blind you all."
The sunlight filtered through Erwin's body in a manner that defied physics and caused permanent damage to retinas. Hanji had tried studying the strange phenomenon once, and, well… that's why she wore glasses now. "But the sight was worth it," she would often tell people.
"Don't take this the wrong way…" Marco often joined Jean after training outside to clean their gear together. "… but I've always thought you'd make a great leader."
"Gee, Marco, who asked you?" Jean gave him a playful shove. "I can't keep even keep up with your skills, and you're saying that?"
"I mean it. It's because you are weak."
"Ha?"
"This makes you trustworthy. You understand that everyone else is weak, too, and you're able to assess situations based on that and know exactly what to do. Know what I'm saying?"
Being young and arrogant, Jean misunderstood Marco's intention a bit and took it as an affront. "Oh yeah? Would a weak person try to start a fight with Reiner?"
"What? Jean, don't-"
"Hey Reiner!"
Reiner looked over from the bench where he sat with Annie and Berhtlod. "Yeah?"
"Is it true you wear panties under your uniform?"
"Excuse me?"
"Jean!" whispered Marco. "Stop this!"
Reiner stood up, stance wide and shoulders back to emphasize the full measure of his burly 6'1" frame.
"I said," Jean ignored Marco tugging at his sleeve, "do you wear panties under your uniform?"
Reiner walked right up to Jean and glared down at him. "Are you suggesting that femininity is an insult to my character as a man?"
"Uh." It was not quite the response Jean expected, but he decided to go with it. "Y-yeah! What are you gonna do about it? Spray me with perfume?"
"I see. If that's how you truly feel, then you won't be needing this."
Reiner tore off the skirt of Jean's uniform, making his gear drop to the ground.
"Hey! You give that back- ACK!"
Reiner lifted Jean up by his jaw with one hand, then dragged him over to the nearest low-hanging tree branch and hung him there by his harness with the other.
"And you stay there and think about what you said." Reiner shook his finger at Jean and walked away.
"You know what, Jean, I take it back," said Marco over the sounds of Annie spraying a flailing and crying Jean with her perfume after witnessing everything.
Marco… I can't believe that's really you…
Jean was the one who found him. It had been two days after the Titans' unsuccessful invasion of Trost, and every available man and woman worked nonstop to gather victims' remains and prevent the spread of disease.
Leaned against the broken side of a wooden storefront with shattered windows, Marco lay cold and dead.
"You honestly mean to tell me," said Jean beneath his mask, "those weren't freckles?"
"Chickenpox is a terrible illness, Trainee," said his supervisor, jotting something down on her clipboard. "It must have dealt a final blow to him during the battle."
Jean stared at Marco's corpse with a heavy heart.
"But he was vaccinated… All of us were vaccinated."
"I'm afraid some of those were placebos."
"Placebos?"
"Trainee, we do not have time for this. What was this man's name?"
"Uh… Marco Bodt, of the 19th squad and 104th training class."
"Thank you."
"It explains why he was so itchy all the time… I thought he was just allergic to horses."
"A reasonable conclusion, Trainee. It is a common problem among new recruits."
"Wait… Did I get a placebo too?"
She stared at him with her wide, tired eyes, and then jotted down another note without looking away from him.
"I mean, is there a way I can find out?"
"Again, you do not have time to worry about that. Gather his corpse and put it with the others."
"But-"
She walked away.
"What is all this…?"
Jean had a lot more ground to cover in recovering bodies, but he did not expect to turn the corner and find a far more sickening sight than the body-strewn streets he encountered thus far. He walked in on Sasha and several more of his colleagues gathered around a huge, bloodied, gelatinous ball of mucus, bile, bones, entrails, and the dismembered limbs and torsos belonging to no less than fifty people. Although any faces in the mess could not possibly be recognized, Jean could make out many bodies with uniforms bearing the Garrison Guard and the training crests. Hundreds of flies swarmed around the unspeakable horror, and Jean almost gagged from the smell despite his mask.
"The Titan's regurgitated remains…" said a member of the Garrison Guard standing nearby. "They don't have any digestive organs, so when they're full of humans they throw them right back up."
"That… that's so cruel…" whispered Sasha, unable to look away.
"Oh my god," Jean strode up to the mass. "There's my keys!" He pulled out the gooey set of keys. "Hey, Marco! Marco, I found the- oh."
The funeral was held later that night. The billowing, cackling fires consumed the remains of comrades that had been alive barely forty-eight hours ago. Those soldiers that remained alive gathered around the sobering sight, they themselves changed forever.
Sasha and Annie stood a bit far from Ymir, glaring at her and still pulling thorns out of their skin.
"What really pisses me off is that there was a mattress store right next to it," muttered Annie.
Sasha nodded and licked the salt off her wounds. She craved the mineral.
How many of us… though Jean, would have chosen to be soldiers, if we knew what was awaiting us…? If only I hadn't met you guys… I wouldn't have to worry about who's next…
Jean crouched down and picked up a soot-covered piece of bone, all that was left of a whole person. He held back the tears.
"Jean," whispered Connie. "Did you really have to leave Marco's corpse by that shop?"
"You shut up!" he hissed back. "What if I was in the placebo group?"
"That's what the gloves were for."
He got up and dusted himself off.
"Have you picked a military branch yet, Jean?"
"Yeah." Jean turned to Connie and the others. "I'm going to enlist in the Survey Corps."
"What?"
"You can't!"
"You'll die!"
"I have to!" Jean held his own wrist to stop himself from shaking. "After everything that's happened, after everything I've seen… I can't ignore it. I just can't. I have to fight."
They stared at Jean, seeing him in a new light that had nothing to do with the flickering fires.
"I want to join, too," said Krista. "That was so scary. No one should have to go through that."
"You serious?"
"Yes, Ymir."
"Well, then I guess I have no choice but to follow you."
"I can't believe you guys," said Jean, smiling despite his anguish.
"Ugghhhhh me too," stammered Connie.
"And me," said Sasha.
"I guess we're all in this together, huh?" said Reiner.
"I guess we are," said Bertlodt.
"Nope," said Annie.
"This means so much to me, you guys." Jean wanted to hug all of them, but he instead turned to watch the fires in silence with them, a final moment of grief for the perished.
"Do you think they're finally at peace?" Sasha asked.
"I like to think so," said Connie. "This is like our goodbye to them."
The embers spread to the sky, like souls returning to the heavens, while other, heavier embers, gently drifted to the ground as though they were not quite ready to leave yet. These glowed especially bright. Too bright. Their heat seeped onto pieces of wooden and cloth debris still left over from the attack earlier, and small new fires began to blossom at an alarming rate.
"Were… were any of us trained as firefighters?" whispered Jean, looking at the spreading flames which flickered upon his and the others' faces.
"uuhhhhh." Connie glanced at his gear.
Trost burned down.
When Haruka awoke, it took him a few seconds to comprehend where he was. Although he lay in a bed, the air felt cold, stiff. Flickering firelights shown from behind what appeared to be bars, and when he shifted to sit up, he sensed chains tugging at the heavy shackles around his wrists.
"Wha… where am I?"
"A dungeon," replied the uniformed man sitting across from his cell. Haruka squinted in the firelight, and recognized him as none other than Commander Erwin Smith of the Survey Corps. Beside him stood Captain Levi, leaning on the wall with his arms crossed. Two armed Military Police officers stood guard near the cell as well. "You're currently in the custody of the Military Police," continued Erwin. "We received permission to speak with you earlier today."
Haruka's eyes widened. "No way… that means…"
"I'm afraid so."
Haruka flashed a rare grin. "I actually got into the Military Police!"
Somewhere, water dripped from a leaky pipe and echoed down the hall.
"Er… not exactly." Erwin pulled something out of his pocket. "This key belonged to Dr. Grisha Jaeger, if I'm not mistaken?"
"Yes… he gave you one too?"
"No." Erwin put the key back in his pocket. "Your friends tell us that there may be significant information on the Titans hidden in your missing father's basement."
"I wasn't allowed in there because that's where the washer was."
"In order to get to that basement, we must recapture Wall Maria and the Shiganshina District. If we're going to have any chance of saving humanity from the Titans, we're going to need you to completely surrender your strength to us."
"And then I'll be in the Military Police?"
"I will… put in a good word for you."
"Erwin," Levi finally spoke. His voice was smooth and deep, like a gently flowing brook. "I'll take responsibility for him. Tell the higher ups." He walked over to the cell and grasped one of the bars before peering closer at the prisoner, making sure the expression on his face was clear. "I don't really trust him. If he betrays us or loses control, I'll kill him on the spot. After all, no one is better for the job than me."
"I'll have to do some heavy convincing on my part, Levi," responded Erwin. "Technically, you cannot take care of any minor after child protective services blacklisted you."
"You forget to remove the cocaine out of one shipment of teddy bears and suddenly they're all over your ass about being 'a danger to children.' Tch."
"Okay, Levi." He gestured to Levi, and the both of them walked away and left Haruka to ponder his situation. Most peculiarly, the dungeon became significantly darker the moment Erwin stepped through the exit door down the hallway, as though someone had flicked off a light switch.
INFORMATION WE CAN SHARE SO FAR
Commander Erwin Smith can absorb and emit sunlight.
Author's Note: Who am I kidding, I love Rei…
(… and I hate myself for that mineral joke…)
I meant to make a Christmas Carol omake for Levi, but I don't have him quite developed enough for what I have in mind, so it will have to wait until I write more chapters featuring him… He's my favorite after Armin, so I will be messing with him a lot.