AN: It's clear to me that Isayama once intended Eren to perhaps be a great leader among the Survey Corps with his rather eloquent speeches in Season One. The courtroom one especially always gets me nodding along in approval. It's one of Bryce's only good English dub scenes too. Yet, that presence and charisma never materialised into the story and he remains a sad-sack subordinate while Hange and Levi steer the plane into the ground at full throttle. So prepare for LoTGH Reinhardt / Siegfried versions of Eren and Floch, with Armin becoming a softer version of Oberstein and Mikasa being the royal bodyguard as per usual. Perhaps she can be a better version of the 'Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic: Revan' novel's "take", on the Jedi Exile to Eren's KOTOR II Revan? Some of you may have noted said game's exemplary script being referenced in the the first two chapters.
CHAPTER IV
THE SUN
"MAMAAA! MAMA!" Eren screamed as he alone tore up the flight of steps to their home. The giant piece of Maria's gatehouse lying atop the shattered frame. Smoke plumes stark against the dusking sky.
He skidded to a halt, Carla Jaeger lay on her stomach, she had just been about to step outside to take in the evening and await her son's return when the meteorite had pinned her beneath near a tonne of rubble and the house's crossbeam.
"Eren... Why are you...?"
"I'll get you out! I'll lift this off you!"
The boy dug his fingers into the block of hardwood and heaved for all he was worth. Which wasn't much. The skin of his fingers was shredded and torn from the friction, splinters digging under fingernails but he didn't even register the pain.
"The Titans have gotten in, haven't they? ...Eren! Run away from here!"
I want to! So hurry up and get out of there! "I won't run away from you this time! We're escaping from this together!"
"Sweetheart... The debris has broken my legs... Even if you could get me out, I wouldn't be able to run."
The grief struck Eren and submerged his chest just as potently as if he were drowning.
You know what that means, right? "Be strong, okay?" she whispered to him and the damn broke.
"THEN I'LL CARRY YOU WITH ME!" he shrieked to high heaven.
"YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER THIS ONE LAST TIME! I FORBID YOU TO REMAIN HERE!"
That only made Eren redouble his efforts. His scrawny arms pulling for all the leverage he had when he finally found it, a bite-point.
Inch by agonising inch he was lifting the beam, tendons in his arms first popping, then snapping, cartilage clicking, spinal discs pressed downwards like a Titan's fist pushing him into the ground.
Blood seeped from his gums, teeth gritted so hard they too began to groan and splinter.
"EREN! DON'T!" Carla begged her only son.
*CRACK!*
Noradrenaline pumping through one's system at factor nine times more than a usual stress incident could give one superhuman strength. But it didn't protect you from the consequences of using that strength. Not when your joints collapse, muscle fibres are ripped loose from their housing atop your bones and your spinal column itself breaks asunder like old dry wall.
Eren cared for none of that as he made himself a paraplegic. He cared that the beam he'd impossibly lifted for three whole feet came crashing back down on his mother's back; breaking all her remaining ribs and causing her to choke to death through pierced lungs. And he had to watch as they lay adjacent to one another, her hand outstretched to stroke his watery cheek, as she drew her last desperate breath through bloodied lips.
*BOOM!* *BOOM!* *BOOM!*
A Titan stood above them, not Dina's smiling aberrant but his own. More haggard, more packed with muscle, with silver roots in his jet-black hair and the eyes of a seer.
"And so you kill her yet again... Without the Slave here to share the load and the Mongoloid's fetching of the Drunkard. This would have been your end, Hunter."
"...Don't... Call them... That..."
"Why? You believe it too deep down."
It reached down and plucked Eren from where he lay. Eren welcomed the distraction as it squeezed his body to pulp and popped his grape-sized head into its massive gaping maw.
He was a severed head. One crowned with a circlet of suspending nerves, his spinal column a u-curled snake of glistening bony segments. A reflection of how pitiful he had become.
In half a dream he attempted to lash out at the itchy fleas on his cavernous back; sending out a defence force. But he had no wish to live anymore. Their attacks were sporadic, uncoordinated and deliberately restrained. If he had the will he could summon fields of flesh to burn the interlopers, impale them like a shrike's prey on a thorn bush, cover his tenuous connection with a crystal so thick not even the Jaws could bite through it in time...
He did none of these things.
Because he had nothing to fight for.
No family. No land. No freedom.
"Let it flow through the cracks in your spirit... Your will... Your desire... Your dream..." What do you want to do?
I have to kill them.
You want to kill them?
I... have to... No. I want the choice. I want to be strong. To be able to let go. To be able to take. I don't want to be afraid, or alone anymore. I want to be powerful. I want to live a hundred and forty years with her and see our...
"I DON'T WANT TO DIE!"
His head was falling, blasted off its mooring by a necklace of dynamite and it collided and bounced with the dusty, arid plane two hundred metres below.
The blast of a nuclear reaction followed from above as he marshalled his own strength; an orb of unstoppable power, melting all in its path and sending a pressure burst outwards.
The Earth is my shield, the bright ruler above can only burn so deep but I can go further and take what I need.
He descended, drilled down in a cyan light lost to the one overhead. From the dead soil he channelled minerals and all manner of life before life; constructing a skeleton from carbon and calcium, a fossil that should have never been able to rise again.
But rise he did from that molten impact crater a devilish colossus all his own, to stride out and meet his enemy eye-to-eye.
"You really love this hell, don't you, Eren?! All right, I'll follow you to the end!"
Oh, I don't think so. Goodbye, Armin."
From beneath his erstwhile friend, in a whirlwind of energy he summoned a translucent stalagmite fifty metres tall. It ripped up through his taint to pop out of the top of his skull, leaving him hanging there like a man-shaped shish kebab.
"AAAARMIIIIN!" he heard Mikasa scream on the wind; atop the giant bird that was winging towards him.
It's over.
Even as Armin's spindly Titan arms tried to lift themselves and achieve something; the spike began to glow, filled with rare earth gases and elements that were not meant to mix not without...
The edifice ignited, blowing the Colossus Titan apart into ludicrous gibs that rained across the landscape.
Unfortunately, the blast wave had not caused the bird to be knocked off course and it continued its flight as Armin's mutilated body, alive or dead it mattered not, was flung to his death.
Ah, I wish it had blown the two of you away as well, Mikasa, Captain. But I'm used to these sorts of trials by now. Show me... What will you leave behind in your final moments?
Not much, it turned out. As soon as they had sky-dived from Falco's back and latched onto his skull with their grapnels, Eren unleashed a wave of localised steam from his head alone. A wall of heat and water with a radiance and temperature higher than even Rod's Titan had produced.
They didn't even scream as they were flash broiled in mid-air, blood turning solid in their veins and every organ imaginable rupturing. There was not a molecule left to even set alight before they shrivelled to twin lumps of unidentifiable flesh and hair and dropped to the earth with finality.
Falco was screeching to any that would hear, announcing his lust for revenge. He turned and dive-bombed Eren's nape, wings tucked in.
Sorry, Falco. You saved me... Now give me your wings so that I might fly home to them.
With that, his will reignited like a phoenix. He had to keep moving, he would never stop. He had to see what was beyond this hell as Armin had aptly called it. In a flash his head had reattached to a new body grown from his neck down. And his corpse pallor sprang to life with a gasp as he exited his Colossi's nape in the form of his old advancing form to face the Beast and the Jaws in one.
Did you think you gained that shape because of my brother? Because you were gifted? No. Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.
Falco's talons and beak were poised to rend through his foe. They could shred through granite and his stork's bill was capable of snapping an entire locomotive in two. To fight him hand-to-hand was idiocy. But his bones were hollow and only his face was armoured.
Eren summoned nodules of crystal all over his chest and stomach, like bumps from nettle-stings and focused the gases that powered the ODM-Gear and Thunder Spear propellant underneath them. Once Falco was ten metres away, he gathered the power and flung his arms wide.
His shrapnel bomb tore Falco's left wing clean off and riddled his feathered chest with football sized holes. The boy Warrior spun and crash landed among the Colossi's tresses and was trapped as he thrashed in the black spider-silk. Before he knew it, Eren had fashioned a lariat of the hair and looped it over his long jaws, snapping them shut like a gator wrangler.
Five hammer fists to the base of the skull soon put paid to his struggles. The reverberations no doubt sloshing every bit of oxygen from the Titan's pilot. It took fatal brain-bleeding concussions just to incapacitate a Titan Shifter while housed within their nucelli.
"The armour burst technique should serve you well in the future, especially if you gain the War Hammer Titan in this iteration of your life without killing Lara Tybur by accident. But when consuming one of the Nine you should beware... The prior possessors may resist your attempts to acquire their strength and knowledge... The longer a Titan has stayed in a family line; the greater this resistance. If The Coward King's vow to renounce conflict had not still bound the Founder to pacifism; the Spy would have had his soul flensed and his mind ravaged beyond insanity."
The Jaws had travelled through four inheritors in nearly as many years. It was as weak as a kitten. But the Beast would be another matter entirely as he sunk his teeth into Falco's nape and crunched the child's body into bloody gloop. Then he learned that the hardest battles were those fought in the mind. Or at least another level down into the mind.
"Should you reach our mother and gain the power of the Founding Titan; of an energy field that permeates all life. The power of the Attack Titan will bloom, to transcend time not only around yourself but through every facet of history. We will become the Grand Pneuma she could never be, shape the universe to our will."
"When, I reach that place, that is the one thing I shall never do. No one being should possess that power to remould the people in it. The world is broken and I wouldn't know where to start to fix it."
"Even if it means abandoning your mother to the end she suffered? Unless you try you will never know."
"And if I touch that power and fail then I have as good as sealed my fate as my own mother's killer. I will take my own life before that."
"You would take it after, regardless. Remember, Hunter. Here you have died a million times already, in a billion different permutations in a trillion differing lives. Grandiosity will not be your shield."
"That's your sin first. I wish to affect only my world and the people in it. The Well of Knowledge was never meant to be gazed into. Not without losing who and what you are."
"You are the only one in the universe chosen to do so. Why live as a man when you can die and be reborn a god?"
"What? As some animist fool who can see through the eyes of all birds that fly the skies and all lizards that crawl the earth. I would reject godhood for the same reason any sane person would, because I am not a believer." he uttered stoutly, reminiscing fondly and viciously: "God! What a load of bull!"
"After all you've seen?"
"Exactly. To place one's self on the highest throne, above all, is just relegating yourself to another gilded prison. When you have the power to achieve anything without effort... There is nothing to strive for further... You'd make me the effigy of a bronze cattle. The Devil of All Earth, chained to Tartarus by hoof and horn. So who's the greater slave between us?"
It now held aloft Historia in its clenched grip, taunting him as her perfect likeness futilely struck at its great hand as Carla had done against Dina before it had squeezed her so hard she had vomited up her organs.
"Yet she is the centre of gravity around which you spin. Where all living things feel, there is weakness. And she is y-"
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Eren charged his avatar, bone and flesh already wrapping around his form, elevating him in liquid gold lightning to create his fifteen metre class assault unit.
But the Eotan Onslaught that opposed him had suddenly grown to twice his own height and reach, the illusion of his beloved flickering away. Effortlessly, it backhanded him across the district. An eggshell of summoned armour over Eren's whole body as he flew, was all that stopped him from being rattled to death by the multiple impacts even as it peeled off him in icy chips.
"You fought better when you were a nine-year-old brat, Hunter! Remember! How do you face and slaughter an opponent who is larger, with weight that outmatches your own?"
"With a weapon, with subterfuge, but crystal knuckle-dusters will hardly do me any good."
So Eren ripped the nearest steeple from its roof and allowed the webs of crackling gemstone to grow through his hands and encase the architecture into a sword cestus gauntlet. His speed and versatility in creation had improved: but taking three to five seconds in a battle to draw out a weapon was the same as trying to have a picnic during it.
It had closed the distance created and the taller Attack Titan's right leg was scything towards him in a sweeping low kick even as he tried to forge his implement, forcing Eren to backflip-spiral jump over and plunge the jury-rigged spike into its hamstring. He punched away with a hammering frenzy, bringing it to its hands and knees as he severed its calf.
Rolling over, it swept the outer left inwards, trying to bat him into the Walls. But Eren drove the spike into the fleshy side and braced, drawing on his inherent regenerative abilities to stop his own legs from snapping off from the strain, veins glowing molten for the split second as he scraped back against the crumbling ground beneath and the massive force against.
Before it could start swinging him like a rat through hip and knee-articulations as Bertholdt had to his ignominious defeat, Eren smoothed off the poniard into a double-edged sword and executed a flyaway dismount spin, using his weapon as a removable uneven bar to land on his opponent's stomach.
Its elbows came up, trying to squash him in their collision, but Eren spun and cleaved one arm off and half-severed the other in a single blow of his diamond sword, though the effort cracked the obsidian-brittle material.
Undeterred, his mentor used his remaining heel to bridge and twist, trying to belly-flop pin him to the ground, where he'd be crushed and suffocated. Eren immediately presented his nape diagonally to the sky and focused all its residual energy to send him steam propelling into the cool air as if he's been fired from a trebuchet, his old Titan meeting a crunchy end as it was flattened.
Already Eren had made capillaries under his skin burst voluntarily, coruscating light gathering around him. Instead of arcing fruitlessly, the energy could be channelled and ignited to increase one's mass or momentum. He aided the advanced shifter process as he forward rolled and spun through several mid-air gymnastics to reverse his course and elicit a partial transformation. His ribcage, right arm and hardened fist materialised near instantaneously to drop-smash straight through his teacher's nape and sternum to sunder even the ground beneath up to his wrist.
"Yes! I did it! First time I've won against you! And it only took me-"
The Attack Titan reared up, its neck snapping past any reasonable juncture, flinging its head back. The massive skull collided with Eren's exposed body like a wrecking ball.
Eren came to blearily, faintly aware that his bones and organs had been liquidated, that he was a splatted, protoplasmic jelly smeared down a side street from where he's been flung from his Titan's vertebrae. Here, in Paths, one could heal from anything but it was slow and uncanny. Painful yet pleasurable, as if cleansing you of impurities and vanity; as he'd just learnt. Always double-tap. Had they not suffered such arrogance leading to Reiner's survival?
It stood over him as he reconstituted. "Well done, Hunter. That improvisation and muscle memory was inspired. You're ready to learn voluntary nervous system compartmentalisation and then move onto what I just demonstrated. The ability to move the Titan nucelli from the thirtieth vertebrae to other vestigial areas of our organism."
"What does the Founder Ymir want from me? What does she want to witness?"
"Is it not obvious? Everything she has been denied in this cruel world. The beauty she was denied."
"When I see her. I don't think I can forgive her."
"We shall see... That too lies within the flows of causality."
"Whether to deny or embrace her? I suppose the former would have no effect after the sad excuse for an existence she's led. The agony I'll have to share from her to save those I love. The land that I love. I thought I'd become inured. But to connect with her, to feel her helpless despair and agony; it terrifies me. The fear only grows as the days count down to the inevitable."
"That is why these memories of the past and of many futures must steel you. Otherwise you will be haunted to a fate worse than death. You will take her place as the timeless master of the void and create a world where there are only Titans. A place of deathless beings you will mould forever until the breaking of the world."
"Hell."
"No. An interstice. A mirror of this world where I reside. After all, to the lost souls within the Tree of Life, you are a torch tossed into the darkness. No doubt you shine brilliantly for them. This is the reality you must trudge through from here on. A world invisible to the eyes of the flesh. To stand in the interval between two worlds, that, while mutually significant. Do not make contact with each other."
"Why?"
"That is the destiny of the one who was born to both originate and inherit my will. Your being and every last drop of blood, every last wisp of dreams within it, is mine."
Eren contemplated that for a moment, then the rage took him.
"...Destiny... Destiny. Destiny. Destiny! SHUT THE HELL UP! You can save all your high and mighty crap until after I've been mind-raped by these damn visions! Originator?! Inheritor?! DESTINY?! QUIT SHITTING OUT A BUNCH OF CRYPTIC, DEAD-END EXPLANATIONS! The point is, this is war! It's no different from any other war! Nothing I can't handle! NOTHING! The last one standing wins it all! Tell your mother and your siblings, the Eight of the Nine, that I'm beating all of you back down to hell! Leaving me half-eaten that day will be the end of all of you! I'LL HUNT...! AND KILL...! ALL OF YOU...! DOWN - TO THE LAST - ONE! THAT'S MY DECLARATION OF WAR!"
After the thaw of winter, the day had come at last. The day the Survey Corps would escort an exodus of refugees back to resettle Shiganshina and from there make a great survey of the land beyond the Walls.
Eren was in the process of helping adoptive parents gather belongings and supplies for the wagon train. A great camp had sprung up around the royal orphanage in preparation for their departure.
He did not recall the exact moment he and Floch had become firm friends, but he imagined it was because it was the red-head's idea and not his own to start what he called 'public works'. Where soldiers would use their agility, endurance and technical know-how to help on construction projects, charity fund-raising events, running creches and primary schools. Of course Levi had only been begrudgingly interested in the clean-up that came after such activities and had even proposed to her highness a division that would deal with hygiene and rubbish disposal. This Garbage Corps would probably not see the light of day however; as municipal guilds and gong collectors already worked hand-in-hand with agricultural experts to dispose waste and didn't want the military muscling in on their turf.
Floch was a brilliant soul though. While intransigent and blunt he had a knack for winning people's hearts through honest action and Historia had given him a position on her council dealing with public relations. Members in the old guard were quick to build-up animosity and jealousy at his raising star. Especially once they had to shut up, since Eren had quickly joined his voice to Floch's and the military's popularity began to skyrocket, with the dynamic (and picturesque) duo taking progresses to all eight districts to capitalise on their status as heroes. The soldier who rode into the jaws of death and emerged unscathed. And the soldier who had toppled mankind's greatest foe.
Sometimes the queen would even join them and in the presence of such shining heroes, of stern onyx, welcoming gold and dynamic ruby, before they knew it the Cadet branches were inundated with fresh recruits who couldn't wait to join their icons after three years of prodigious training.
"Thank you, lads." an older gentleman acknowledged as Eren and Floch helped shoe and saddle his horses. It felt more like a summer fair or carnival than a staging ground. The polar opposite of the camps Eren had lived in when he was ten and the world had begun to end. There were games and dances, stands and stalls.
"It's our pleasure, sir." Floch tipped his non-existent hat. Still unfathomably proud of the swirly nest cut that was unique to him, or his barber.
As they moved through the crowd of civilians, helping where they were needed, they eventually came across her grace and the other womenfolk gathered around her, sewing and darning, some even cobbling and one was a war mechanic, trying to incorporate military technology to a more mundane utility. In this case, an Ice Burst Stone powered loom and mangonel.
But Historia was at the centre of it all, women and girls of all ages deferring to her and basking in her sunny presence, one more alive than Christa could ever compare to.
Eren felt Floch nudge his shoulder playfully with a fist and he turned, bewildered to find him smirking.
"Close your mouth or you'll catch flies, king."
Eren spluttered before trying to draw up and reattain his dignity.
"I wasn't staring too blatantly was I?"
Floch adopted a pensive look, one hand on his chin, the other arm crossed.
"Weeell... I'd say only half the people around us here," he said, gesturing to the hundreds milling about in their work. "noticed you making goo-goo eyes at our lovely monarch."
"Oh, is that all?" Eren jibed dryly.
"Ha! Just go talk to her and I can get started on the invitations. Even if you don't decide on a date yet, everyone here will believe my postcards are legit."
"Alright, quit it you... In all seriousness; the military has to fall into our hands before I'd risk bringing Historia into the fold. Hange is weeks away from cracking and taking that new spot in the R&D department at the Foundry. Once I'm in command of the Survey Corps and have overturned the cadet's training regimen; we can oust the old farts and their antiquated ways."
"You'd be better served bringing her in on the plan soon. A lot of information trickles back to her. She's practically the unofficial spy-mistress of the nation because she's so loveable."
"Huh, the Cattle Farming Goddess indeed... And to risk her life should some of the archaic elements not want to go down quietly?"
"Better than risking her wrath, Eren. That I can guarantee."
"Damned if I do, damned if I don't."
"Just another day for the Survey Corps, eh?" Floch huffed, "you know you had me fooled for a bit about which way you swung?"
"Oh, let's not start this!" Eren laughed.
"No, I'm serious!" Floch rambled, in a tone designed to evoke the pulling of the corners of Eren's lips.
"You and Armin were this close." he gestured with finger and thumb. "You seemed to be hanging off him. It was a bit creepy to be honest."
"Him and I were always close. We only had each other at one time; so we didn't mind hugging or holding hands. I suppose that obvious affection brought the bullies down on us all the more so... They probably thought we were deviants as well as heretics."
"Aw... It'd be sweet if it wasn't so pathetic."
"Hey!" Eren cajoled tolerantly, thumping Floch on the shoulder.
"Ow! Dead arm, you twonk!" They proceeded to rough-house as only good mates could until Historia noticed and set a group of squalling toddlers at them, to calm and placate with stories of their exploits.
"I'm sorry, Floch," she winced sympathetically, holding the hands of two of the scamps: "they want to know about the giant monkey..."
Forester was not a man easily daunted. Not after what he'd survived. Eren almost thought him unfittingly cheerful and quick to get over his comrades' deaths. But they all coped differently and Floch had had a large but shallow pond of friends that he was quickly replenishing.
"Sure thing, you little monkeys!" Floch welcomed, always playing off Eren, who was the more sombre of the pair and outwardly unapproachable to some of the youngest who were intimidated.
"Go on, sweetheart." Historia encouraged a very shy girl, squatting down to her level, while the rest of her year-mates sat around Floch, already animatedly telling the tale of the Beast's long arms and pot-belly. "I told you, he may look scary and aloof but he protects us all. Like a big friendly, green-eyed wolf dog!"
"I resent the comparison, majesty."
"Nonsense. It's the highest of compliments. Don't be afraid, Annabelle. Say hello to Eren."
"H-hu-hullo..." she stammered softly and adorably, still clutching onto Historia's skirts.
"Hello yourself, little lady." Eren tried not to glower but he'd always had a face that seemed to piss people off. And the unconscious hardening of his spirit could sometimes be sensed by animals who avoided him and children who were perceptive and wary in turn.
"Eren! They want to see how strong the Titan is!" Floch hollered, the kids chorusing their agreement. Historia apologised with just her facial cues to convey sympathy but Eren shook his head, it was fine. There were always small reminders that he was one of hopefully only two legitimate monsters on this island. It was a small miracle any children were not terrified to be near him, he thought wryly.
"All right, who's first?" he laughed as two boys and girls each latched onto his biceps and with an exaggerated grunt he lifted them up to his head height in a strong-man's pose and began to spin them like a carousel to shrieks of delight.
"Mr Jaeger! Mr Forester!" one of the lads piped up. "Which one of you is the strongest?!"
"You have to ask, Daniel?" Floch gasped, "look at those big river rocks. We'll see who can throw them further."
"Clear some space, you ruffians. And don't throw your back out, mate!" Eren jibed as Floch hefted the small boulder from where it lay, covering a mole warren.
Even the adults were cheering on the contest now as they threw a rope along the grass to measure the cut-off point.
Floch took a run-up to cast the stone with a great shout around ten feet or so, to the adulation of all the ladies save one who merely clapped politely.
"Come on, Eren!" Historia found herself suddenly cheering and the crowd quickly took up her call:
"Eren!"
"Our Hunter!"
"Titan-Slayer!"
"You'll never beat Major Jaeger, Floch!"
The joyful crowd had marked where Floch's stone had landed with a white pebble and made to hand the rock to Eren. But he, eager to outdo his friend had picked up a igneous boulder nearly twice the heft and girth of the last and pressed it to his clavicle to shot-put. Much to the masses' amusement.
"Are you trying to make me look bad, Eren?"
"You don't need my help for that!" Eren returned, to the "oohs!" and chortles of his audience.
With a tottering power walk and a half-twist and yell. Eren blasted his burden up and away; it landed a good five feet ahead of Floch's marker.
Eren couldn't deny that the people's cheers and back-slaps weren't touching even as he sought out the smiling face of the one he wanted acknowledgement from the most.
"A fine throw. Impressive even!" Floch said amiably but with a hint of mirth.
"It was, wasn't it." Eren replied, more statement than query.
"I was just wondering..." and here Floch paused, playing to the crowd. "If you could do that when it really counted."
Eren glared at him sternly; enjoying the act as Floch backslid. He should have been a mummer.
"A-as it counted in battle, that is. Could you squash a man's head with that throw?"
"I could squash you... Like a worm." Eren announced, much to the crowd's approval.
"You could?" Floch grinned, arms crossed over his collarbone, radiating confidence.
"Aye."
"Well then do it. Would you like to see him squash me like a worm?" he asked all and sundry.
A chorus of affirmatives greeted hie ears. Even the queen hollered aye!
Floch stepped out on the field, then bent down and plucked his white marker stone from the grass to toss up and down in his palm.
"Come do it, Eren!"
"You'll move."
"I will not."
"Oh, you will!"
Eren accepted the larger stone from a pair of Reeves Company men and to the entertainment of all; rocketed it at Floch's carrot-top head. It was a good job the children of Eldia were a hardier race than the others that walked this earth. Capable of surviving the G-forces and blunt trauma that ODM-Gear training entailed due to tougher bones and more efficient circulation. Floch would only have a splitting headache for a week.
At least he would have. If his missile hadn't sailed past Floch's temple by an inch and thudded down behind him. To the groans and some cheers of the assembly. Floch had indeed not even moved a muscle. No-one could doubt his bravery.
Now it was Floch's turn to receive adulation as he judged the distance and cocked his own throwing arm, much to Eren's increasing nervousness. But a contest was a contest and he stayed rooted to the spot, bracing for impact.
He heard Historia's gasp of dismay even over the impact of the pebble hitting him between the eyes with a dull *Thunk!*
The ringing in his ears and the commiserations of the crowd had just about abated when Floch stood in front of him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You all right? You look a wee bit shaky."
"... Should have remembered... You have a way with surviving rocks..." Eren gritted out, a purple-green bruise swelling on his forehead rapidly.
"When you're Titan training again I'll show you the proper way to pitch, brother. Good job on not healing fully though, now Historia will fuss over you, you sly devil!"
Eren knocked on the door to Mikasa and Armin's town-house on this sombre evening. Tomorrow the Corps would be assembled for the first time in eleven months since their return from Shiganshina. Ready to ride out through the tunnels he had created within the three blockages he had made before.
Mikasa answered, in a dressing gown, slippers and his old crimson scarf of course. She was as startled as a black rabbit.
"...We haven't seen you... I mean met up alone since... Has it really been since before the battle and our lock-up in detention?" she answered plaintively from the door-step. Eren had stood back on the porch.
"Yeah... A lot has changed for all of us since then."
"Armin is asleep but... Do you want to c-"
"No, I can't come in. This is your home, his and yours, not mine. I just want to say that tomorrow, I want to ride with you both. Just like old times. I have something to tell you both. Once we reach the ocean. Once we see it realised."
"Really? I thought... After what Floch said to you, about me giving up on Armin... I thought you hated me."
"Of course not. I could never hate you. No matter how much of a pain in the ass you were about protecting me. It got exhausting after a while so I just accepted it begrudgingly like a little brat. I don't mean to open old wounds but I think you preferred it when I actively resisted."
Mikasa sighed heavily.
"I'm so sorry, Eren. I think... There's something deeply wrong with me... I can't let go of that day when you saved me. I needed something to take the place of my parents and I think you're the only one who can ever do for that me. I lost you and accepted it. I lost Armin and accepted it and now you're both here alive but will be gone soon regardless."
"I understand there has been many ups and downs. I saved you and that makes me family but more than that; you love me don't you?"
The half-Oriental, half Eldian girl blushed deeply and pulled her scarf up to hide from his piercing gaze.
"I am going to free you of a part of me you long thought you might have held. I can't return those feelings you nurse in your heart. For while I care for you, it is but a shadow compared to your own love for me. I cannot give you what you seek."
She had turned to stone; the light in her eyes dying.
"As a sister, I will always love you. But my heart and soul... It belongs to Historia. She saved me from the blackest pits of despair; as I did you from yours."
Mikasa trembled minutely but as with all things, she mastered herself, collected the shards of her broken heart and drew herself back together with poise, grace and dignity.
"I know. I suppose... I've always known. Since that day at the orphanage when we first helped her carry those supplies in. I wanted you to talk so easily to me, to tease me so freely. I was... I was jealous."
"As I was for something that's solely yours... What a silly pair we make." he tried to joke and though he thought it fell flat, Mikasa still gave a cracked chuckle.
"I never acknowledged you properly." he continued. "I took advantage of your devotion, ignorantly and callously and even just in this past year I've been distant and cold to an extreme. That ends now. I will tell you why, I have new memories, ones that I want you and maybe Armin, if I can pull him from his depression, to be aware of so that we can save our homeland. Perhaps even defeat Ymir's Curse..."
Hope and joy seemed to spring back into Mikasa's expression at such a statement.
"You're my family and we won't be the last. We can build a better one, not just us alone but side by side. What you thought we might have had is gone but this is the start of everything new and shiny and to prove so I want to share the first of my secrets with only you. Not even Historia can know. It would only stress and frighten her. She's our family now and we protect our own above all."
Mikasa nodded firmly.
"Absolutely. You can count on me; always and forever. Just... may I... May I have a hug?"
"Come here you." he opened his arms and she ran into them, shivering and from the pitiful noises she was making, trying hard not to cry. He stroked her hair and swayed gently back and forth.
"The Titan that ate my mother. That ate Hannes... It was Dina Fritz. She was of royal-blood and a Titan. Her flesh was the medium to which I was opened to the Coordinate and what allowed me to control all Titans that day."
She pulled back, her grey-violet eyes widening. "but if that's true, then... Historia's in da-"
"Only you and I know what it looked like. No-one in the world can corroborate this information, except maybe Zeke if Reiner gave him an accurate retelling, but who would trust his word? And this Intel is useless to the military anyway - but if they ever knew..."
"They would make plans... Plans to undermine you and her grace. You're both too high in the people's estimation for them not to consider you both a threat. We shouldn't even let Zackly be near her; that bearded geezer gives me the creeps. He has too much power over us."
"You're right. The old guard thinks the upheaval of this island began and ended this last year. But the truth is, it's only just beginning..."
AN: Sorry guys, all that lovely Floch inclusion pushed the ocean to next time! Eren and Armin's beach continuation will be fleshed out! And we'll even get a tour of his greatest hits, yet with a twist. What would have happened if RBA got their nefarious hands on our coconut before he became a one nut! Simpmin will become Uprising Armin once again but it will ironically enough take the Chad Bertholdt of RTS to show him the way!