AN: Let the Armin fan-boy tears RAAAAIIIN FROM THE SKY! Umi-da is about to get wrecked. In this chapter and the next.

And yes, that little Gary Stu deserves all the pain.

CHAPTER V

THE MAGICIAN

"Eren...!" Hange greeted brightly, some of her old exuberant self coming to the fore. "I like the long hair-do! You'll have to tie it back soon if you want your adoring public to see you!"

"Huh, it's getting away from me, I'll admit. All militaries in the outside world have regulation cuts so as not to attract parasitises when in such large communal numbers and at close quarters, but not we Eldians. We're immune to lice, fleas and ticks thankfully. The work of some past king to make our blood unpalatable..."

"And there we have it..." she continued ruefully. "The treasure trove of information your mind and its memories represent. They sprang forth from the toy-chest once we had perused Doctor Jaeger's journals... And now you're slowly affecting a cultural revolution..."

Eren did not deny it. Waiting patiently for Hange to continue.

"Our old order and our world, the old ways of doing things are dying, Eren. Not yet dead, but soon. I can't fathom the enemy we face... Not after being a researcher who was wrapped up in the nature of Pure Titans being our world's only threat for so long. Me and Levi have merely been airing our woes to any reporter who will listen. We're the last two of an organisation that effectively doesn't exist anymore."

"You all devoted your hearts to victory and obtained it. All those lives brought about what every other nation in this world knew to be impossible yet we did it anyway... we defeated the Warriors of Marley. No other force on earth can claim the same."

"These erudite speeches of yours..." Hange chuckled approvingly. "You're forgetting one part though, Eren. None of those military divisions had the Attack Titan at their back. Erwin was right... Your resolve was the key to freeing us of despair. And now in this interim you've taken up that torch once again while I've sat on my hands."

"Hange..."

"No, it's true. I thought I would affect great change in the Corps... But in the end all I created were water-proof smoke signal rounds, foil-packaged wafer bars and re-purposed ODM-Gear matrices into some steam-wagon cargo lifts."

Eren was disquieted with Hange's self-recrimination: "The latter of which saved my life the day Bertholdt and Reiner abducted me. They transported a whole herd of our best horses from Karanes to near Trost in mere hours."

"I staved off complete disaster with my gadgets, yes, but to evolve us past the bottleneck Karl Fritz forced us into technologically..."

"What do you need of me, Hange?"

"Ah, cutting to the point. Just as Erwin did... No more of me chatting your ear off all evening... No, this has to be done... I want to provisionally transfer command of the Survey Corps to you, Eren. The choice is yours of course and there will be a probationary period where we'll ensure you can cope with these new resp-"

"I accept."

"-sibilities... You do? You do!"

Hange whopped, leaping so high her spectacles flew off, she was grinning ear-to-ear and her remaining eye sparkled with wetness for an instant as she clasped his shoulders and thanked him profusely a mile a minute.

I've seen this... When my old man's future memories were opened to me... Hange exclaiming with joy, on the verge of a breakdown... If I'd just selfishly kept to myself... Not taken the initiative to improve the island... Then I never would have witnessed this... I twisted the future... into an outcome I desired... I can save them... I can save them all.

"Oh, Eren! You have no idea how much this means to me! The Aaltonen family at the Metal Works Industrial City need a Survey Corps representative skilled in the sciences to affect cooperation and development of these new blueprints you've provided. I can be that officer! All this politicking and people-pleasing was never my forte. Armin can be your logistics officer, like Mike was for Erwin!"

"Slow down, Hange! We'll get it all sorted but I want you to remain commander for this last expedition tomorrow."

"Are you sure? It would be a PR coup if the queen dubbed you the 15th commander, the youngest in our service too, before we set out."

"Nah, this will be the accumulation of the original company's mandate; to take our land back from the Titans. You should close that chapter out, Hange. This is what all those devoted hearts achieved. Let me be the one to carry those hearts into the future. Into this great uncertainty."

"Very well... I would apologise... For putting this burden on you. But like him, this is the outcome you wished to arrive at, wasn't it?"

"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. Eight years is more than what Erwin had to lead you all."

"True, but Erwin was already in a high-ranking position since before you were born. Keith was too full of pride to notice that most of the regiment looked to his junior over him. Not the best parable for what I'm about to suggest, but if you ever need advice or support; me and Levi will do our best to advise you."

"Thank you, Hange. Besides, it will be a greater sight for the public to announce the transition of power when we return from the ocean with sketches and silver lithographs."

"Clever blighter, to think we'll soon have commercially useable film to take photographs of our own. With the archives open and your memories to serve as a guide, we have avenues of creating a whole new hybrid-breed of technology powered by Glowing Ore and Ice Burst Stone."

"Aviation should be our first point of call. Angel developed the first man-portable propulsion system in the world. What are balloons compared to that?"

"Yes! We should compile a research journal together; perhaps under the guise of a mythological text so it would be useless if such a codex fell into enemy hands... Eren... Why does your Titan have such incredible recall compared to Armin's? All these memories can't just be from your father."

"They're not. Each of the Nine have unique properties, as befits the key combining branches of Ymir's soul. From what I've gathered this last year and this is Intel that must be held in strictest confidence."

"Aye, Commander!" Hange saluted gamely.

"This Titan has marched in the vanguard. It has ever pushed forward, seeking freedom. And for freedom's sake; it fights. It has not yet found what it is seeking, Hange! It has a mission. My mission! To secure our right to live with liberty and dignity! It is the embodiment of the Survey Corps itself. Heart laid upon heart. Life built upon life. Everything it ever strived for - to reach this moment in time. Where I will finish our mission and free all Eldians from injustice. This will is the direct opposition to the Founder, who only desires obeisance and control and so it has travelled, like an echo from the place it was born to arrive here again. They can dread it. they can run from it. But it's already here; I am here. Like the Paths themselves, time has no power over it, so if I want to live, I'll live. If I want our enemies to die, then they'll die. Because it's already been decided. I'm the oversoul of Ymir Fritz Herself and I, existing before and after her life, will deliver her from bondage."

Hange had been writing Eren's speech in one of her many notebooks but had slowly petered off and let her fountain pen pour blue ink onto the page.

"Couldn't sleep, Commander?" Eren asked, all chipper, to a tousle-haired and droopy-eyed Cyclops.

"You gave me too much to wrap my head around last night, my boy. Not only why you've maturated in experience and presence but about our sorrowful origins and all the philosophical and ontological issues that arise from that. We are truly not the humanity we've pretended to be. We are Subjects of Ymir; her children or her slaves... Will we ever know?"

"We will. There's no other option but to reach that goal. Or all those before-"

"Will have died in vain. Us and our catchphrases, huh?! Wait, where's all the gas-canister supply line I had requisitioned?"

"I had it replaced with blade, thunder spear and signal rounds."

"Cheeky... Want to tell me why?"

"I can use the armour's power with such precision now that I can replenish ODM-Gear propellant telepathically when in Titan form. Its base chemicals are derived from the same source. And by laying my own hands upon the canisters last night I was able to compress the volume of the gases inside so that they could be refilled at the depots five times over. Our days of worrying about resupply and conservation in battle are over."

"And you did experiment with a single tube to make sure it wouldn't burst, right?"

"Yep. Took me a few tries to get the concentration right. Ultra-hard Bamboo Steel shrapnel is more dangerous than any fragmentation grenade devised."

"Levi was right when he told me you were our monster. Place you against greater adversity and you rise to the challenge. Erwin made many great decisions as a leader but he made one mistake."

"Which is?"

"He should have named you to lead the vanguard. Now, off with you. Give a private farewell to your sweetheart before the public parade to see off the 60th Expedition!"

The old Eren would have choked and spluttered out all manner of denials and other rubbish.

"So certain of that accusation, are we, Hange?"

"I accuse you of nothing, my boyo! But me and Moblit were an item once, good friends after. I know what that spring in your step and those wistful smiles signify! It's good that you keep your work and private life separate and that it's a lovely, oh so cute and wholesome secret romance! Otherwise Mikasa and all the other eligible bachelorettes within the Walls would be after her life!"

"You've huffed too much gas, Hange! I didn't know you could reach that tenor!"

"Oh you must say goodbye to her now, Eren! I'll sit here and luxuriate in the sunshine and rainbows!"

"Riiight... You do that my soon to be subordinate."

"Have fuuun!"

As he rode to Historia's manor which had been given over by the local magistrate, Eren pondered how Mikasa and Armin could decide to settle back into Shiganshina as Mikasa had told him last night. It was a place of horror and battle for him. Hell, it had been a place of battle even before. The surrounding countryside he might be able to endure but anywhere within the Walls was better than here. Even the Underground City. Only one person would have ever been enough of a reason to get him to stay but her duties did preclude that for now. No, Armin and Mikasa's wilful, deafening nostalgia nauseated him. He wondered if they could ever reclaim their old friendship. Then he wondered - what was ever there truly to reclaim?

Perhaps Armin was the sole arbiter, the origin point of his yearning for more than he had. But damn it he had come to the realisation himself that night! No-one had told him he was not free. For Mikasa he was a security blanket that she would and could grow out of. But Armin... without Eren enjoying the ocean alongside him; what else was there for him in his life? The anger was percolating, rising, growing, festering within him now. He had to bleed the poison from within his chest. Confront his first friend and get him to see the truth of this world. The truth that there was not some external reward that would validate all his hours locked away reading musty tomes. To live was to gain and nourish from others not from abstract things outside of them. He could not believe the crap he had spouted on that rooftop about Armin having more than hatred to drive him. How he had demeaned himself before Levi and voiced fears that he was nothing but base lusts.

The only prisoner between them was Armin! His self-loathing, his insecurities, his envy of his betters and his hypocrisy that he thought himself wiser, nobler, more conscientious than everyone around him. Oh he disguised it well, with platitudes and faux profundity. But in reality he was that same child, who wanted his cake and to eat it too. To be just and right and never get his hands dirty unless it affected him in the most direct of ways. He was a moral coward. He was the friend he still loved and the naive fool that he despised. All this contradicting ugliness swirled within him.

He needed Historia. Her presence always soothed his rage. She who would never stand in judgement of him as a person; only his actions or lack thereof.

Guards let him pass inside and around to the side of the gated great house. There, he saw her through a window, reading by a newly developed lamp.

You've always loved readers, you fool. Probably because you never cared for it too much and wanted to know what enjoyment they derived you couldn't.

As if by prescience, Historia looked up from her book, her loose, flowing white-gold hair falling past her shoulders to frame that angelic face and her earnest sapphire eyes.

They quickly latched onto him, from where he was riding below and with a start and a squeak she fell out of sight.

Eren reigned his mount to a halt, chuckling softly at her antics, feeling inordinately proud at having such an affect on someone so usually unflappable.

Historia glanced around the curtain for what must have been half a second to confirm his presence only to dive back again.

That infuriating, smug, handsome man! she fumed as she grabbed a more ornate shawl than she was used to to protect her modesty.

Wants to spy me in my nightgown and negligee does he?! I should just leave him hanging, the blockhead!

But open that window she did with a regal air, one that soon evaporated with his forlorn face looking up at her, beseeching.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Corporal Jaeger?"

"It will be Commander when we get back, Your Highness." he japed, referring more to her elevation than her title.

"You convinced her?!" she asked excitedly.

"I was aiming to but she beat me to the punch. If there's one thing I know about Hange she knows how to delegate."

"That's wonderful, Eren! You deserve it more than anyone to possess that power. And I know you'll be brilliant."

"Because it was you who first suggested it?"

"Absolutely. Now... Guess what yours truly just managed to pull off behind the scenes."

"Something momentous..."

"Guess!"

"Hmm..." With an athletic leap he stood up on his saddle then jumped to the facade and clambered up to her window sill, perching his feet below on a protruding beam so that she still stood a half head taller.

"You gained us more allies and eroded Zackly's power base all at the same time, because how could my magnificent monarch do otherwise?" he whispered in her own pinkening ear.

She kissed him as if it would be their last and once they'd resurfaced and she'd untangled her fingers from his locks she was grinning, eyes shining.

"I did. The nobility and gentry have been divided along the punitive taxation the junta placed on them. Under the auspices of a pandemic prevention; we gave them blood tests and ratified them all along the lines of being Eldian or of a minority bloodline that Karl wished to preserve. Zackly had to protect their rights to not seem a tyrant but that's pushed the nobles who weren't aware of their Eldian ancestry into my arms. Darius 'oh so honourably' took over the talks, pushing his puppet queen out of the limelight. Little realising that he's made more work for himself; work that will distract him as we make more moves and consolidate more and more power. The guilds and military will still lead our country monetarily so it costs me nothing to promise to undo the noble taxation."

"Brilliant..." Eren breathed having little choice but to launch a surprise kiss in retaliation for earlier, leaning into her for all he was worth while trying to both hold her and keep his balance. They soon found themselves sitting entwined in the window.

"When you ride out? Will you think of that boring old ocean or me?"

It's a trap! Still there's only one sane answer, old boy.

"You. Only you. Forever. You're my dream."

And he meant every word.

Historia showed him how much she agreed with that sentiment.

Flower petals poured through the air. The crowd roared and stamped as the replenished two-hundred strong Survey Corps Regiment advanced past the hollowed chrysalis statue of the Attack Titan and into the outside world. Eren rode once again in the centre. Pinned between Armin and Mikasa. Hange, Levi and his outriders willing to give their lives first to preserve him.

Arcs of green smoke guided them through morning, mid-day and afternoon. The last Pure Titan sighting had been in the dead of winter, in January. Yet still they used Erwin's immortal long-range scouting formation for perhaps the very last time it would be needed.

To his left, Armin seemed to take great joy and captivation in the sun's rays that he'd seen every year and the caws of sea birds he'd never heard before. It had quickly stopped becoming endearing.

Eren's eyes, as always, only focused on what was in front of him. Not what fripperies might fly inland overhead.

It was approaching evening when they waylaid their first Titan. A pitiful pill-bug thing with arms and legs so small and stunted it had crawled for seasons only to make it a few miles from the coast.

"Hey!" Floch could not help but warn Eren as his friend stepped calmly right into its jaw's reach. But said mouth was buried under the ploughed and now grassy earth that was growing around it. Its consumptive instincts similarly subsumed. Not even a glint of interest within its glassy eyes.

Eren laid his palm against its warm forehead. Unbeknownst to all present, tapping into its, his memories as easily as he would take in breath.

"It was sent to our heaven. It's a fellow patriot." he uttered coldly.

Jean, Sasha and Connie all went numb at the statement; remembering who this, who they truly were once all the pretence was stripped away.

"Should we kill it?" Floch asked.

"No. It may be of some use. I'll pick it up on the way back."

Eren dissociated from the present as they continued their mission. It wasn't until he found himself standing barefoot in the surf that he became guilty of Armin's offence and gazed to the sky for some way out that did not lie within.

"Look, Eren!" snivelled the toad's voice. "A saltwater lake so large you could never deplete it! Even if merchants farmed it their whole lives! What I said... Wasn't wrong after all!"

Is the Mongoloid crying, weeping for something that always existed? Something that should have always been ours? He only cares about being right. Not the last of his family, who Annie as good as killed. Not his country who he cares nothing for despite it giving him everything. And certainly not you, Eren.

"Yeah..." was all Eren could bring himself to say. "It's so huge..."

"It is!" Armin managed to issue, practically a sob. "Hey! Look at this, Eren-"

"On the other side of the Walls, lies the ocean... And on the other side of the ocean... Is freedom. That's what I've always believed. But I was wrong. Awaiting us, across the ocean... Is the enemy." he turned to Armin and Mikasa, fighting back the anguish that was rising in his throat. "Everything is as I witnessed in my father's memories."

The pair were silent, as if they'd never truly seen the Eren before them. The fools. They'd always known. They always knew who Eren truly was, what he was capable of. They simply thought he'd only do such things for them and never to their detriment. The fools. Eren pointed to the azure horizon.

"Right? So if we kill all our enemies upon that distant shore and beyond. Does that mean... We'll finally be free?"

Even from here he could sense Armin's disquiet. That he was in fact the depressed one. That he couldn't be serious to make such a blanket proclamation.

"...Armin. Walk with me. We need to talk."

"Really?! I mean, of course Eren. Let's, let's go."

So walk they did. Away from their comrades, hundreds of meters up the beautiful white sands. Armin cupping his precious memento.

"We haven't spoken in... Well, except through letters. Or when duty demanded it." Armin tried to break the ice, wary but pleased that they could clear the air.

Eren halted. Unwilling to look at someone who shared his beloved's colouring so much yet instilled in him almost all the antithetical reactions in his gut.

"I want to see if you can survive one day in my world, Armin. Remember when we were hiding out from the royal government? You said we might need to hurt our own citizens. Engineer some disaster to get them on our side and turn the narrative around. You backslid but I knew you were serious. You're as ruthless as me, you're just too much of a hypocrite to admit it. If it's your own life to cast away, you can be the bravest man on earth. Otherwise you're a snivelling ingrate."

Armin gaped like a fish. An attack the last thing he was expecting. That was his problem. Somehow, despite all their travails and life-or-death experiences. Somehow all those experiences had not shaved off the edges of the man. It had rounded them, made him softer. How was such a devolution possible? It flew in the face of natural selection.

Eren rounded on him. The old fury comforting in its sheer rightness and willingness to be directed at an appropriate target.

"I saved your life Armin. Not just the captain. I crawled on broken shingle like a cat with its hind legs broken, for you. I begged him to let you see this sight. That you needed to see this. But more than that, more than anything. I was begging him not to let me lose my first and dearest friend."

Liar. You could throw him into a war-zone right now and you wouldn't bat an eye.

"Eren..."

"He knows what it's like to lose those closest to him. That's how much generosity lies in his heart. He gave away his commander for me. For me. He sold it with some spiel about letting Erwin rest but we both know the commander was more than just his tenacity. He had a vision to save our people within the Walls from all that threaten her. Don't you see, Armin? You don't need to inherit Erwin's will. Because I will."

"Eren! I don't know why y-"

"If you are not with me, Armin, you are by definition against me. You were my brother and I need you to be on my side. Because if not... What can you do? Challenge me? You don't even have the will to use your power. I can feel there are bruises and lesions on you that should have healed and yet they remain. Me, Floch and Historia are already laying the groundwork to take the military by popular revolt and depose fossils like Zackly and Pyxis to the asylums they belong. I could kill you right now and the captain too if such a lunatic scenario came about where you tried to actively depose or restrain me."

Eren was not bluffing. True the captain would manage to shatter his feet and dislocate his jaw if his subordinate bear-hugged him from behind. But he couldn't incapacitate Eren fast enough before he transformed at point-blank-range and turned "Humanity's Strongest" into a charred cinder. The Ackermann lineage was near impossible to fight on even grounds at this point in their history. But they were as easily killed as any normal man or woman. You just had to be smart about it.

"Eren?! What the hell are you saying!? This isn't you!"

"I will not betray my dream. This is the man you've always known me to be. You of all people should have realised that."

"Eren... No..."

"Ever question me again. Ever confront me with another pointless issue of your self-worth. And I'll devour you. I need the man who woke me up in Trost. Who exposed Annie. Who died to defeat Bertholdt. Not this... thing you've devolved into."

He slapped the conical shell from Armin's trembling hands into the surf, where it was lost in the tides.

"Forget that fucking conch! The symbol of Marley is the seven-partitioned oyster shell! I won't stand to see you mooning over it like it's some treasure."

He cupped Armin's nape and dragged him until their foreheads touched, tourmaline eyes burning into ocean ones.

"I need you to become the man you were always meant to be. Not today. Not tomorrow. Now."

"But where does it end, Eren? Man's inhumanity to man?"

"We had it all wrong, Armin. I was wrong that day when I said I was merely human. We are both human and Titan. All of us, a race of giants. Nothing's changed. The Titan devils still threaten humanity only the shoe is on the other foot and we're left in an untenable position. Do you want us all to die? Do you want to restore the old Eldian Empire and suppress our enemies?"

"None of those... I just want to talk-"

Eren slapped him across the chops with an open hand harshly before pulling him back close.

"The last Marleyan supporter of Eldian civil rights, including those on Paradis, was tarred, feathered and burnt alive. Like the royalists, like Kruger's family. Try again."

"I-I want us t-to l-live! I want to live w-with you a-and Mikasa! With e-everyone!"

"I know you do... The guilt you feel at surviving over Erwin... I know what it feels like. Like standing atop a mountain, with wind washing over you, your cares swept away, then the recrimination lands upon you, flings you down, buries you alive in misery... I got Thomas, Mina, Nac and Milieus killed because I charged in without a plan. My decision not to fight got Gunther, Eld, Petra and Oluo killed. The deaths of Hannes and all my comrades in all our battles lie on my shoulders. All those deaths can't be for nothing. We have to carry on their will."

"I understand that I do, I do... But it wasn't your fault. Hannes only died because I got you captured... If you hadn't listened to my advice to retreat to Wall Rose..."

"I chose to listen to you. Because I believed in you. And I want to believe and rely on you again, brother. Help me. Follow me. And we'll build a better world than the one beyond the sea."

"And if Paradis lives? What happens to the innocent?"

Eren wanted to strangle him. He wanted to hurt him. He wanted to embrace and forgive him.

"...The foundation has to be built on something. Even Commander Smith knew that. They live in cities, Armin. The volcanic steppes of flaming water, the snowfields of sand, the northern lights. They all await us, past this final wall of water and war machinery. And yes, the teeming masses that hold that machine up, innocent or otherwise. And we have to destroy them. Or there'll be no end."

Armin was silent for a long time.

"I can't believe that, Eren. I want to believe in the best of people. Especially of those we've never seen."

"You're right. That's why I'm going to show you."

With a flash of sparks visible only to their eyes, Eren pulled Armin into the past.

AN: Thanks for all the comments, everyone! Let me know if you think Armin can be taken in some interesting direction or whether he served his purpose in RTS. Next time: Godholdt!