AN: Whoo-boy... Never thought I'd be writing this but, trigger-warnings for graphic description of rape and other indignities like coprophilia. (plus some internalised Armin and Mikasa bashing) I will try and salvage Mikasa as best as I can in a couple of chapters time but it - is - HARD! Isayama never wrote her as the most compelling character but her devolution in 138&139 was so staggeringly bad that it almost equalled Eren and Historia's daylight assassination. I have to include some of the horrifically radioactive waste-level portrayal of a character I'm really ambiguous on (stage whisper: the story would have been a hundred times better without her) so I can redeem her later with the (very few) positive evolutions she was drip-fed. This chapter is heavily inspired by the character of 'The Darkness' in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. With a dash of Skull Knight from Kentaro Miura's BASED manga. "Hunter" instead of "Struggler". It's funny, my absolute favourite Berserk chapter, ironically matches right up with AOT, the big one! The best one! 130!

For anyone who wants to watch my blind read of 139!

www youtube com / watch? v=5_KjLo6ArbE&lc=Ugy79SNg22wgGtBU1U94AaABAg

CHAPTER II

THE FOOL

"Hunter... Have you ever stopped to consider, that if you gain access to the Coordinate, you will become endemic to our mother's own point of view? A slave just like her?"

Its voice was a sepulchral rattle, deep, resonant, rich and powerful. What he wished he could modulate his own voice into. It stared out of the black, blazing emerald eyes that shone like a night predator's but were somehow also misted and blind with cataracts. Its face was flayed, framed by thin stringy curtains of hair and it bore the intersecting jaw of a ram, stretched and stitched into a human skull. Its teeth, as large as tombstones did not part, yet the voice issued forth from it regardless and its head hung in the dark, bloody nerves and muscle groups suspending yet floating of their own desire.

Every night since his lips had made contact with Historia's skin, as he slept, the Attack Titan, It who he both yearned and feared to be would confront him in his dreams and be forgotten the next morn like the sun parting a mist.

It did this because if It didn't partition said memories from his waking hours; Eren knew he would have gone catatonically insane. Mind shattered from psychosis.

"Of course not. The existence of the Nine, of the Pure, pays credence to our own individuality. The epochs of history, with warring factions among Eldia herself prove she had no control. Even when her power bloomed and propagated in death, no king could use its powers to change or suppress human nature. To deny us violence. Her weakness in life is what caused the narrow-minded manifestation of her desires... The worst person in the world to be given that power - was her. And this world is the result."

"Then why did her soul not separate to an endless multitude? Hm? You curse our beloved mother... And fittingly so. Her daughters, our sisters, cursed Ymir as she lay dying in her own blood. For abandoning them, for not loving them enough to stand - and fight - and work. But she would have loved you, Hunter. A strong, passionate son to offer up to her horned lord; the King of Stars and Sorrow. He of the Fritz, the Devil of All Earth. Who claimed the Mother of Titans as his brood mare while sating his lusts on every young filly in sight. You are her opposite; all that she could not be. But even as you are now, you could not abide the suffering she endured were you to experience her memories in full."

"I have suffered." Eren growled, "more than most can ever claim!"

"You know nothing of hell, little saintly Hunter. But you will, in time. And perhaps then you might imagine that to stay fettered takes a different kind of strength. A woman must endure every deprivation when mankind plays his adult games of conquest. She must sell her morals and dignity just to survive and stave off the next beating, the next rape, the next indignity of seeing your family suffer not just for a moment but for weeks as the human in them disappears and only a placid, broken pet remains. Can you: so proud, so mighty, so certain, truly experience the scourge of war upon the back of every woman in ancient times? That is what mother truly represents: she possessed all the power to change her circumstances and yet she remained his slave. He would mistreat his bed-warmers as well and yet their privy parts could not be restored as his bitch wife's could. They had every opportunity to cut his throat as he slept. Yet they didn't. Why?

"...Fear. Fear so great it didn't matter what he inflicted on them. Like the nations that would see us all dead. Fear of Eldia reborn rules them alone."

"Yes... Fritz's two-thousand years of tyranny inflicted the greatest psychological wound in living memory into the ancestral consciousness of every country who seeks your destruction. And yet that fear compels them to fight, not to obey."

"I am not ruled by fear of them."

"Not for yourself, Hunter... Only of what they would do to your beautiful queen..." It sneered, ghastly, mocking.

"I will kill them all before they touch her. Every, last, one."

"Killing is always the easier road, boy. Did not the lion heart girl teach you that? When you have a cause to protect, anything and everything is justifiable, is it not? If you would but endure, break the Ackermann Slave's heart and allow her to free you from your mortal coil; then your friends may live in a new world; free of Titans..."

"You are trying to trick me. To suffer for the sins of others is something Historia showed me should never be borne. Even one for the many. It's her beliefs, the beliefs of a direct descendant of Ymir herself that contradict your Founder; she who is a part of you and a reflection of me. My own weakness, my own feeble moral mores that count for nothing against survival. Deep down you wish to crush them all as much as I do on odd days and spare a small commune on even days. You are my phantasm, my beast of darkness. And unless you have more to tell me than my own mind can already provide, you will be silent."

It was, for a long time... Then: "she can never understand what you see, what you feel. You are a decrepit old man in the body of a youth. You frighten her, you disgust her; she would be better off with the ruffian who cast stones at her then a wretched beast like you. One who kills his own precious kin..."

"You've tried this nonsense before. Don't you have anything new in your bag of tricks?"

"Well done, Hunter. You didn't even flinch that time. What of the Slave? How will you free yourself of such a bloated tick?"

"I'll part ways with her amicably. Like adults. I have two homes furnished for me by the military, one near Historia's orphanage in Sina. And a chataeu in Trost. I'll live in the cabin, away from their suffocating influence."

"Your... Friends are revolting..." It snickered. "The Mongoloid I might understand, you shared a dream after all, one that burns within your breast still to this day. In spite of all his failings, and how much you gave and fought for him compared to his piss-ant efforts. Until he was a man in that last battle at least. But the Slave... Did you want to fuck her nine-year old asshole with your flappy micro penis? Ram her like you rammed that blade repeatedly through the slaver's lungs?" It would always do this, be as explicit and as crudely shocking as it could imagine in order to rile Eren. "Your emotions ruled you; she only saw a saviour but you wanted a grateful pet, just like our mother was for Fritz. You are the son of a thousand thousand slave whores; all bastards like you. And the Slave's trauma, being such a weak and shrinking girl had such a drastic effect on the Ackermann gene modding. Do you know what she would do for you, if asked? She would debase herself for you, eat your excrement like it was the finest meal and ask for seconds. Wait by your grave for a hundred years like a dog. She would have been better served to be taken by old, licentious men in the Capital than the fate you bestowed her, degenerate."

"Pot, meet kettle. I'll tell you why I killed those men and it wasn't for her."

"Oh? Do tell, Hunter."

"I did it because I wanted to see what it felt like. How I would react. I wanted to make them as small and afraid and as powerless as they'd made others. I wanted to butcher those animals wearing human skin: because - I liked it! Because I enjoyed it! In fact, I loved it! The rush of life running through my killing blow, down my arm to my heart, as I cut the first two down was indescribable. And if I hadn't, none of you sad fucks who bear my Titan would have had the steel-bamboo balls to advance and subjugate their enemies. None of you would have ever reached me if I wasn't leading by example! Put that in your memory pipes and smoke it, bastards! And it gets better! I had some physical attraction to Mikasa it's true, I was an early bloomer but her lack of any type of real agency, except to reprimand me when I endangered myself, repulsed me on a visceral level. I'm sure there's a part of my unconsciousness that would sit and cry in a bath-tub; wishing that that He-woman genetic freak had thrown me over her shoulders and taken me to bed by force. Because compared to Fritz, the greatest-grandfather of 95% of all Eldians still living - I'm a milk-sop cuckold!"

It was laughing now, the first time it had ever done that.

"But wait...! There's more! Instead of setting this slave free from me by ending her life. I instead used her as an indefatigable bodyguard who would forever protect me if I showed her the barest hint of interest every other day. Unlike Fritz, I never had to break my woman down and rebuild her in my image. She was already mine the day I walked into that room and slit that shit-rag's throat. I only wanted to save her, like I wanted to save my mother. And yet the story you would lay out for me would have me condemn both my mother and Historia to deliver something that can't ever be saved. Even the end of the Titan powers would not undo her dependence on me. A false salvation for the island, for the world, for Historia, for Mikasa. No... This I will not abide. I will deliver her from suffering and I will use the Founder's power to do so, such as the world has never seen. For the waning remnants of her sanity; I will create a paradise."

"Magnificent, Hunter!" It applauded, still chuckling heartily. "You truly are Fritz's son."

"No... I'm worse. The most despicable, cruel-hearted boy in history. You wanted the antithesis to Ymir. She who bent over and took it every day of her miserable life. Well I will take all their eyes and all their teeth for the one they cost me. Every mother for the one I lost, every father, every son, every daughter and child we lost in the Fall will be repaid with interest. There is no cost too great to spare my mother and Historia from death and pain. And if the Founder's power, free of all vows, cannot save the woman who bore me into this world. Then I will settle for a foundation of two billion corpses. And I will rebuild a shining empire atop - their - bones."

"Beautiful... Beautiful... Or you could seize that worm between your legs and be a fucking man. Tell the Slave that you do not love her; that you value her friendship and protection all the same. You don't need to be entirely honest about the latter; it's not even her own skill that saved your choking carcass after all. Use her dependency, feed off it. Give her a token of your validation and trust that she has always desired. And if she still cannot bear to follow you in the end... Then leave her."

"So what I have just declared would be her fate will come to pass regardless?"

"If it gives you any comfort then at least you will have done everything in your power to persuade her to your side. Or do you wish to devolve into that worm, screeching on the beach about how only you may ever touch her. Such repulsive weakness and such admirable strength, existing in our one mind... Unacceptable. Purge it."

"What you say is true. But how can I confront her when I don't remember what my own mind and soul have taught me when I awaken?"

"Because you have not truly awakened, Hunter. It is a curious thing, the human mind. Once it feels something strongly, deeply, it is etched into the memory, the subconscious. We can unlock that part of you at any time we wish. We can show you an end where all your lusts and dreams lie unfulfilled. An end where you slaughter four fifths of the world population and never knew why. Where you watch impotently as She takes another man to her bed and twenty-years later, at the height of Her tyrant's reign, explosive clusters come raining down by the thousands, from enough aircraft to block out the sun; to turn all of the island to fire and ash... Where you allow your own mother to die, crushed in Dina's fist because you have always been weak, cowardly, less than human and a thing easily discarded. And all your struggle, all of your life, will be nothing more than a candle wick that lights momentarily, then flickers out. But not before burning its originator to death. A temper tantrum from a cosmic child more lowly than Ymir Fritz herself."

"Don't!" Eren screamed. "I'd rather endure Francis Joachim, the 70th Attack Titan's death by being broken on the wheel again; as many times as there are Colossi within the Walls!"

"Now you have an inkling of what real torture is, Hunter. It is not physical pain. You could already work through any pain inflicted in battle. It is hearing teachings without meaning. Knowing what you want to say and never finding the words. Like your cherished Historia, for who you have shared everything, sacrificed everything. And have her turn from you and forget all that you were. You are the Hunter but you are still fragile. You would reap a harvest greater than any Ackermann but you do not have the strength to stay here."

"I will! As long as it takes!"

"Do you? Here at the endpoint and at the beginning of the Attack Titan you have opportunities like few can imagine. In this one night you could push your body and train for months, years, to truly master your powers."

The darkness drew back to reveal the endless plains of sand, stars pin-wheeling over head in a shimmering corona. A branch of aurora borealis reaching so high and so far to the Coordinate of all Eldians, so far, far away.

"But here every minute is an eon. To become the finest blade requires folding and forging in the harshest, the brightest flame. You will forget even Her for a while. If you wish to gain the power to protect her."

"I could never... I won't..."

"You can and you will. Because you are me. A monster existing even before the Source of All Organic Matter. A being with the capability to be the strongest individual in this world, or the weakest. From the Alpha to the Omega. All you must do is make the choice; the one you will least regret. because all your bravado, all your pretences of strength here do not amuse me. You are the embers of a boy who never lived except in the fevered imaginings of those who want to project weakness and indecision onto this world to soothe their failings, their excuses for their own petty lives. He has peaked out from under our shadow at key moments. He was with you in Trost, among the forest of giant trees, under Stohess, within the cave, atop Orvud's Wall and when the Mongoloid was seared to charcoal. Kill him... kill him now... and let the man be born."

Eren found himself with his hands encircling his boyhood self's throat, lifting him high, as if on that day in the cabin where he would have died.

"How do I know this isn't another lie I'm telling myself? A convenient excuse that will doom more than the original visions you showed me."

"Because here we have eternity to sort through the lies we tell ourselves. Here you can strive as no-one before could, instead of stagnate. We can teach you how to spy, how to influence, how to heal, how to fight."

"But Historia doesn't need the Paths or the Power of the Titans to know who she is... What she's capable of. What she has to do now."

"Precisely. That is why you love Her. Why we always will."

"Now... Shall we begin?"

Eren cast the limp, pathetic corpse aside.

AN: Let me know, everyone if you want more of Tatakae!Eren beating Soy!Eren into shape in HxH training chapters. Or whether you'd prefer his enhanced capabilities to be left secret for the Battle of Liberio Mark II. Electric Boogaloo. Sorry guys, I know it's basically a Gary Stu Hyperbolic Time Chamber trope but I won't make it easy on Eren! He won't be sleeping through the final battle! Also, any of you guys getting sick of the defence bandwagon who regurgitates a dozen different variations of: "ackshully! You just didn't uNdErStAnD how PrOfOuNd it is that Eren is a self-fulfilling prophecy with a character arc that is outdone by a straight line!" I can go to the end of any novel or manga, or film script too and add (LOL YOUR PROTAG, MC, LEADING MAN WAS A FACADE) "Brirriant! Do you rike it?"Hisu and Armin smartpass story next! Then the ocean and Mikasa "break-up".