Trost District

Small, stinging drops of rain pelted Louise as she ran down the narrow alleyway. Her hair was sticky with blood, and her clothes and skin were smeared with mud from repeated falls. All of eight years old, she was running for her life, the distant pained screams ringing in the air only scaring her into moving faster.

"Momma!" Her voice was tired and weak, but that wasn't stopping her from crying for help. In the initial chaos, she had become separated from her mother, and despite the death and destruction around her, she somehow believed that if they were reunited, all would be well. It was the viewpoint of a child; a scared, desperate child.

Louise reached the end of the alleyway and peeked around the corner, nervously glancing up at the slanted rooftops, the brown-red shingles and gray stone walls of the buildings she had grown up around providing a small comfort in that they were free of blood. After hesitating briefly, she darted across the street, not caring when mud splattered her lower legs. Taking shelter underneath an overhang in front of a textile shop, a brief memory played in her mind. Her mother was looking at various spools of colored string, glancing down at Louise to see which shade matched the pastel blue of her jacket.

"Momma!" Louise cried again. She knew it was dangerous to make noise, but her desire to find her mother outweighed her fear. She had always known something like this could happen, yet whenever her schoolteacher had prattled on about the breach of the Wall Maria districts six years ago, she hadn't paid attention. After all, Wall Maria was one hundred kilometers away. The disaster the adults always talked about could surely never repeat itself.

Yet here she was, lost in the city she had grown up in, which was now the scene of mass carnage, just like what Wall Maria had faced six years ago.

With one final glance to make sure nothing was coming, Louise began running again. She ignored the footsteps in the mud which were shaped like a person's, but over a meter in width. By this point, the district of Trost was overrun, and it was up to chance whether or not anyone would run into one of them. Before today, she'd only ever seen the drawings and heard the stories, but they had seemed almost too fantastical to be real. Now, she knew for a fact that they were more real, and more terrifying, than anything she could have imagined. She was lucky that she was still alive.

Yet when she ran a corner, her luck ran out. Standing in front of her, a towering beast turned to face her. It's misshapen head was twisted into a terrible grimace, and it's gaping mouth was stained with blood. Despite looking like a human, its seven meter height and soulless eyes revealed that it was anything but human: it was a Titan, and its only interest was eating people alive.

With a scream, Louise turned and ran for her life. Thuds began to sound behind her as the Titan followed her, its awkward gait and unwieldy body preventing it from moving faster than an amble. At its size, however, that was more than enough for it to keep pace with someone as small as a child.

Within moments, it was above Louise, and was reaching down with its long arms to grab her, its bloodstained hands closing around her tiny frame. She struggled, but the large fingers trapped her arms to her sides, and she felt her stomach lurch, both from the overwhelming stench of death that the Titan reeked of, and because of the sudden motion as she was lifted off the ground, the Titan moving to insert the young girl into its mouth.

Louise screamed in terror, squeezing her eyes shut as she neared the Titan's mouth. "MOMMA! HELP ME!"

This was the fate of humanity. Once the walls that protected them were breached, the mindless Titans would flood inside, devouring every last person they came across without remorse or glee. It had happened six years ago when Wall Maria fell, it was happening again today with the breach of Wall Rose, and if it happened in the future with Wall Sina, then humanity would be doomed.

A loud bang from somewhere else within Trost caused the Titan to halt its movement. Frozen just a couple of feet away from its rotting teeth, Louise opened her eyes just in time to see a giant monster materialize out of thin air on the other side of the city. A cloud of steam obscured it, but she could tell that it was as tall as the fifty-meter wall surrounding Trost. She saw a head lean forward out of the billowing steam, and she felt her breath catch.

The monster's head was reptilian, covered in dark scales, with tiny eyes and a mouth full of massive teeth. It was far larger than the Titans roaming the city, and as it turned its gaze to survey its surroundings, she was struck by the almost-intelligent way with which it gazed across the besieged city. After a moment where it seemed to notice something on the ground near it, it raised its jaws skyward and let out an earth-shaking roar which pierced straight through Louise, seeming to rattle her very bones with its sheer intensity and rage.

The Titan holding her lowered its massive hand back to its side, before releasing her. She fell the remaining couple of meters to the ground below, where she landed roughly in the mud and quickly scrambled away. When she glanced behind her, however, she was shocked to see that the Titan was moving away from her. Walking down the street, it was heading directly for the giant reptilian monster, its body becoming more visible as the steam cleared, rising up into the now-orange sky, the rain clouds having given way to a brilliant sunset.

The reptilian monster let out another vicious howl…. and then it began to rampage, furious roars and booming thuds echoing across the city as it spread destruction with every step.

Louise didn't notice any of this, however. Instead, all she managed to do was let out a shaky sigh of relief at having escaped being eaten alive, before she curled into a ball and began to sob.

Outside Shiganshina District, Six Years Ago

"They called it the Alpha Predator!"

Drawing himself out of his wandering thoughts, ten-year old Eren Jaeger couldn't help but laugh, his teal-green eyes gleaming brightly. "Seriously, Armin? Don't tell me you actually think that stuff is real. They're just stories! Nothing out there is bigger than a Titan!"

Eren was sitting underneath a tree with his two closest friends, Armin Arlelt and Mikasa Ackermann. It was a bright, sunny day, with a cool breeze gently blowing over the fields of grass, the bright green blades waving in the wind. Visible to the south, Wall Maria stood tall and proud. The outermost of humanity's three concentric, circular walls, beyond its borders the rest of the world was ruled by the Titans. Inside the walls, there was peace.

To Eren, however, it was a prison. "If there really were creatures bigger than the Titans," he said with all the arrogance a child could muster, "then we wouldn't be trapped behind these walls in the first place!"

Armin shook his head, his blond bob of hair swaying side to side, briefly swinging in front of his ocean-blue eyes. He wryly smiled, clearly used to Eren's aggressiveness. "Well, it's just a story, but that doesn't mean we can't dream!"

Eren scoffed, but Armin pushed on. "It says here that the 'Alpha Predator' was a giant reptilian monster with impenetrable scales and a roar so loud it could be heard from miles away! It even says it was fifty meters tall! Think about it, Eren!" Armin's eyes glimmered with excitement while he spoke. "Fifty meters! That's as tall as the walls are!"

Eren was about to retort, but he made the mistake of glancing at Wall Maria, and he involuntarily shuddered. His home, Shiganshina District, was built within an outcrop of the massive wall, which meant that he woke up every single day surrounded on all sides by sheer stone. "That would be pretty cool," Eren admitted as he tried to mask his resentment at the world he lived in. "If something like this Alpha Predator did exist, we could finally leave the Walls!"

"Exactly!" Armin exclaimed with a bright smile, turning the page of his book and pointing at several brightly-colored illustrations. "Then we could finally see the rest of the world! Gigantic lakes filled with more salt than any merchant could ever collect! Plains of grass filled with all sorts of bizarre animals! Fiery mountains with liquid rock pouring out of them! Think of the possibilities!"

Eren couldn't help but smile at Armin's enthusiasm. "If it's real, then someday, you'll see it all. I'll come with you! While you're writing stuff down about everything we see, I'll hunt and forage for food. It'll be fun!"

"See?" Armin said proudly, turning to Mikasa, who was watching the entire conversation with a somewhat bewildered expression. "Nobody else wants to listen to me about this. Only you two. Yeah, the Alpha Predator's probably not real, but legends always come from somewhere. There has to be some truth to it!"

"I'm glad it's not real," Mikasa quietly said, subconsciously fiddling with the end of the red scarf hanging around her neck. She looked over at Eren, her stormy gray eyes flashing with an intensity far beyond her young age. "Security is important, and that's what the walls provide for us. A giant monster would just be another threat."

Eren stared at her for a few moments, not backing down from her piercing gaze. Though she currently lived with him and his parents, her raven black hair and unusually pale skin gave away the fact that they weren't related at all. Nonetheless, she often managed to get under his skin.

"So?" Eren snapped back. "Humanity has been trapped behind these walls for over a century! I'd take having to deal with a giant monster over spending the rest of my life penned in like cattle!"

"A giant monster that could kill you," Mikasa said as a hint of concern crossed her expression. "Aren't you concerned about that?"

"You don't know it would try to kill us," Eren said defensively. "Just because you're scared-"

"Eren!" Armin cut in, a reproachful look on his face. Eren stopped, and a somewhat tense silence settled over the three of them. It wasn't until a sparrow in the branches above them took off, the fluttering of its wings sending several green leaves floating down to the ground, that Eren sighed and bowed his head towards Mikasa.

"I'm sorry," he said guiltily. He often disagreed with Mikasa's more careful approach towards life, but he still respected her nonetheless. "I just hate not knowing what's outside the walls."

"I understand," Mikasa said as a dark look crossed her face. "But all that's out there are Titans and death. That's just the way it is."

Eren couldn't meet Mikasa's gaze. He glanced over at Armin, who nodded somberly, closing the book in his lap. "I wish that wasn't the way it is," Armin said slowly. "But Mikasa's right. The world outside the walls is dangerous. If they were breached somehow, Titans would come flooding in and try to devour every last human they could."

Eren sat quietly for a moment, digesting Armin's words. He knew his friends were right, even if he wouldn't admit it. Suddenly, without any warning, he got to his feet, staring up at the daunting wall in the distance to the south. Armin and Mikasa glanced worriedly at each other, but Eren ignored them. His fists tightened as an envious look spread across his face. He spotted the sparrow that had previously been sitting in the tree above them, just before it disappeared over the top of the wall. "I don't care," he mumbled under his breath. "Someday, we will leave this world behind."

Author's Note:

Thank you so much for checking out the first chapter of my story! For those of you coming from my older version of this story, I apologize for the long wait, but I feel that this version is much better, and I hope to improve on mistakes I made originally. For those who are new, I must mention that while this is a crossover, it's much more of an Attack on Titan story than a Godzilla story, though Godzilla and other monsters from the Monsterverse will appear in it. I will also be treating this more as an adaptation of Attack on Titan's story than a retelling, with plenty of story changes and divergences, both to the world and the characters. However, I will do my best to stick to the original tone and feel of the story and characters, and I hope you enjoy it!

I plan to release (technically re-release) chapters every Saturday. Thanks again for reading, and feel free to leave a comment!

-AlphaBeta17 (4/24/2021)