AN: Annie, Zeke, Grisha, Kruger, Tom, Porco, Freckles Ymir, Eren, Mueller: they all got MONGED but Bert was the only one who didn't fall for that nonsense.

(Once out of three times at least...) *Deepest Sigh*

Be like Bert. Or better yet, Floch. He never got Umied.

They have better character development then M&A combined anyway.

CHAPTER VI

THE HANGED MAN

"Where... Where are we, Eren?"

"This is the outside world, Armin. This is your paradise. And these are the last moments of Faye Jaeger's short-lived life."

"No... No! I don't want to see this, Eren! This provides us no answers!"

"It's not meant to give you the answers you want. But you mustn't look away from the horror it does offer, because you cannot overcome suffering if you refuse to look at it."

To his credit, Armin only threw up his guts once while Faye screamed for her brother, her mother, her father, anyone to help her as the three large spitz hounds ripped chunks of flesh from her arms. The mauling went on for what seemed like forever. Armin was sobbing uncontrollably when Gross and his sons used certain whistle commands to make the dogs finally go for her throat and face. Much like the story Sasha had told them of Kaya's mother; Faye had screamed until her vocal chords had ruptured and burst.

"So this is the kind of suffering you want to repay to everyone in the world, Eren?" Armin managed. "Gross was an extremist even among Marleyans. He can't be indicative of them all. The Eldians would have risen up from the internment zones if they were arbitrarily killed without rhyme or reason for every minor infraction."

"You'd be right, Armin. In the great southern nations of Rancef and Nerymag, Eldians are treated even worse. Pogroms and lynchings are common. Miscegenation laws are strictly enforced; the non-Eldian partner has their civil rights withdrawn for daring to propagate Ymir's tainted blood. And state executions range from garrotting and firing squads, to beheading and bonfires. The ghettos they're forced to live in makes Liberio look like a holiday retreat."

"There has to be a way... There has to be a way to make them see we're no different."

"You're not listening, are you? We face a threat to our very existence and you're worried about diplomacy."

"They're not Titans, Eren! We can find a way to sit down at a table and resolve our differences!"

"WE! ARE! TITANS!" The holder of the Attack Titan roared in Armin's face. "We face inimical, absolute differences where they have every right to fear and despise us! One Pure Titan can eat through thousands of civilians before it can be brought down by heavy artillery. My grandfather once claimed that it was a miracle of mercy that Marley left any Eldians alive once Karl fled the mainland. They only keep us alive in all their empire so we can be used as disposable shock-troops, war-fodder, cattle!"

With a rush of lightning, the young men found themselves atop a chapel roof in Shiganshina, on an overcast morning.

Opposite them stood an old friend and enemy. Bertholdt Hoover. He appeared just as he did last: dress shirt, slacks, combat boots, ODM-Gear and a bared blade.

"What's wrong, Armin? Aren't we going to talk?" he mocked, jade eyes alight with anticipation at cornering his prey.

Armin finally realised that he wasn't witnessing one of his own old memories. Bert was staring daggers right through him. Here and now.

"Wha - what?"

"Did you think you could upset me by bringing up Annie again? Did you think you could talk meek, pliable, obedient Bertholdt into letting his guard down? But really, you're not doing this for either reason. You're just buying time so that you can surround me with soldiers, while the others try and go kill Reiner. It's all meaningless. I know, as long as you're standing there, quivering like a leaf, you can't do a damn thing."

Armin, shaking all over, found his lips forming the same words as before.

"If you've figured that much out, why did you ever agree to talk in the first place?"

"...I wanted to make sure. I thought that if I confronted any of you again I might start whinging and begging for mercy again. But... It looks like I'm fine now. Yeah. You are all my precious comrades. I also intend to kill you."

"Is that because... We're children of the devil?"

"Oh, no. None of you have done anything wrong. And none of you are devils either. It's just that you all have to die. That's simply the way things have to be."

Armin glanced back to Eren only to find his friend had somehow appeared on the neighbouring roof without ODM-Gear to launch him, abandoning him there with a suddenly charging Bertholdt.

"Wait! We can talk things out-!" he just about managed before Bert swung his whistling blade clean through Armin's head, bisecting it at nasal level.

He awoke with a gurgling screech; still feeling the phantom pain of having his skull cleaved in two. But it was a false awakening. Now Armin found himself opposite another newly furious Bertholdt. One with a gagged Eren backpack and manic fury possessing every fibre of his being.

"CHILDREN OF THE DEVIL! I'LL SLAUGHTER EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!" he screamed, apoplectic.

And with that he fired his grapnel to Armin's right, digging into the ochre plating of Reiner's armoured temple. A hiss of gas and a primal battle-cry was all the warning Armin had before the dark Warrior sliced off both his hands and his head in a single back-hand swipe.

Armin lurched back to consciousness again, hands clutching his throat and then his fingers to make sure everything was still attached.

"Get up! I'm not done with you, you little shit!" he heard Bertholdt's harsh voice before large hands seized him by his trainee jacket and hauled him up. It was dark, lit by torchlight, the night of the choosing ceremony on the parade grounds. Before the stage where Erwin had stood. But no Survey Corps veterans, nor fellow cadets were there to save him. He remembered now that both Commander Smith and Mikasa had been all that stood between him and those last two "deaths".

"EREEEN! HEEELP!" he screamed into the night but no answer came.

"Yes, Eren!" Bert snarled, throttling Armin, shaking him. "Rescue this weakling! Aren't you his hero?! Aren't you the saviour of the Walls?!"

The night was silent. Bertholdt grinned, terrifyingly. It seemed as if he had as many teeth as his Titan.

"I've been looking forward to this, Armin! Just you and me and no-one to interfere!"

"Bertholdt, please... Don't hurt me!"

"I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to help you. You haven't embraced what you've become. In fact you've rejected it. That makes us very upset with you, Armin. This can't be the Founder's doing, otherwise we'd... No... There were legends among the Warrior Unit about the lost Attack Titan but if this is their doing then... Heh, I won't look a horse-gift in the mouth. But you're next, Eren! When you deign to show yourself! I hope you'll give better sport than this one!"

The shade or imprint of all that Bertholdt was draw back his fist and sunk conker-sized knuckles into Armin's mouth, knocking out half his teeth and it only got more gruesome from there. Armin's pretty face was rearranged until one of his eyes had blackened shut, one had popped loose and both his cheekbones were caved in.

Bertholdt was on top of Armin now, beating him bloody into the ground.

"Why don't you fight back, huh?! Fight back, you coward! Use your power!"

The Warrior seized Armin's ears and began to twist and pull. Eren finally made himself known.

"A big man is ripping your ears off, Armin. I'd do as he says."

But Armin remained as meek as a lamb. Wailing and stubborn to a fault, or more likely, he couldn't fathom communication after all the trauma.

Bertholdt elbow hammered the last of his foe's teeth loose then shoved his fist down his throat, trying to choke Armin to death.

Eren watched dispassionately. He was beyond the pale where brutality was concerned. But as he watched his first friend be tenderised to look like viscera in the butcher's gutter, he felt a fool for missing the obvious puzzle piece for so long. Too many bad and good things in his life had distracted him. It had only just come to him right now.

"Of course... How could I be so... He doesn't remember, does he? Inheritance of one of the Nine can wipe away the immediate last hour of short-term memory! His finest hour, Bertholdt! And your death effectively made it so that in his mind it never happened."

"Fascinating..." Bert replied, kneeing Armin in the groin and belly. "So you're saying that, unintentionally, I mind-fucked Armin into his old indecisive self; relegating his possession of the Colossus Titan null and void."

"I'd say... That when a weak persona inherits a stronger through Titan transference, no matter the distance of direct blood relation... There's some overlap. That your conviction to save your father back in Marley and to redeem your people's name is stronger, more concrete. And it has overpowered Armin's non-existent patriotism and childhood fantasies. Not enough to make him a traitor on the spot. But for him to sympathise with the enemy and give them a fair hearing when they deserve nothing."

Bertholdt nodded along, interested. "We did have a battery of psychological evaluations of which the results were never disclosed to us top Warrior Candidates. I always thought my eagle-eye at sharp-shooting was what got me selected to be the Colossus Titan; what with its bird's eye view. But more likely... The brass was trying to see what characteristics they could reinforce or magnify."

"Reiner's leadership and loyalty? Annie's detachment? Your willingness to follow orders like a good lackey?"

"Loyalty, yes. Leadership? No. That was Marcel's forte, though if his and our Ymir's actions are anything to judge by, then the Jaws' spirit is that of self-sacrifice. The armour would be self-deception, an unwillingness to look inside... You remember what it exacerbated in Reiner? His disassociation. And mine... The God of Destruction. Well it doesn't take much introspection: it represents the Founder's old instincts of waging absolute and total war. A being moulded solely to break what others have built and pave way for conquest. Eight of the Nine are just that, tools, incarnations of sin that inflame our people's lowest order."

"Do you truly believe all the propaganda Marley has fed you? They're the second incarnation of the Eldian Empire they teach you to hate."

"What else do we have, Eren? Better than the false paradise Karl Fritz fashioned for you lucky refugees. You enjoyed a century of peace while we were persecuted. The mainland Eldians hold more hatred in their hearts for you island devils than they do for their own oppressors. Why should any of us suffer the past, when there is a new road ahead? The only one that makes any sense..."

"To capitulate? To be their war fodder? To sell your future for one more day of living like sheep?"

"I've heard this song and dance before, Eren. Better to live one day as a lion than a thousand as a sheep? Only you're crazy enough to believe such tripe. And to think that there are others who would follow you into it for even a brief moment, only to immediately regret the time they've sacrificed."

"Perhaps. And yet that mindset defeated your War Chief. It defeated you and Reiner and Annie. More than once, I might add. You all achieved nothing except rousing a slumbering giant."

"We killed Erwin Smith. That's all this mewling animal beneath me occupies his thoughts with. How he's not worthy. How he can never live up to such a great man's legacy. How you should have let him die. If this is the future of the Survey Corps, then your lives will all come to an end once Marley regroups."

"And the world will be saved?"

"By any and all measure, Eren. This island and its inhabitants have to die. It needs to die to bring about world peace. It's the puerile and soft thoughts of moralists and politicians that have kept the Eldian question raging for over a century when they should have just put us all to sleep like ailing pets."

"You sicken me to my core, Bertholdt. You're a true believer, aren't you? More than Reiner or Annie; you just never felt the need to voice it. Resigned to fate as you are."

"Yes... So, Eren? Was it fun for you? Carving me up? Turning me into the gingerbread man with his limbs snapped off?"

"I'll admit quite freely it was an amazing experience. No, scratch that, it was better than sex seeing your dumbfounded expression as I turned you into a stump. That was for my mother, bastard."

"Fair enough," Bert acknowledged as blood sprayed onto his face from below. "Wait... Better than sex? What woman would be crazy enough for a roll in the hay with you, you suicidal maniac."

"Says the man who had feelings for a girl with steel on her bones and ice water in her veins. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. And we've only fooled around a bit, not taken it too far."

"Good. An animal like you shouldn't be allowed within a thousand yards of a pretty girl. And you were clueless to boot. Is it someone I know?"

"Not quite. She was in the 104th though-"

"Mikasa." He answered instantly.

"For the love of the Walls... Why does everyone assume- She stomped over my masculinity every other day! We're practically siblings for Ymir's Sake!"

"And you're a deviant, what of it?"

Eren gave him the finger.

"For your information, Bertholdt, the real girl in question, she's the best thing that ever happened to me, you beanpole prick. It's Historia."

"...Who?"

"Oh, that's right. You wouldn't have even heard the name... Or maybe you just forgot it. Christa."

"You're fucking with me."

"I am not."

"Guess you're the poor rebound guy to her once she realised Ymir was never coming back."

"Keep talking, Marley's boot-licker. I'm not the same man you fought in Shiganshina."

"I should hope not! You could have come at me from any angle in our last fight and yet you charged me like an infant! How did you not die of embarrassment after?"

"Not my finest hour, I'll acknowledge but I was rearing high on battle fever. Something you don't have to experience from up in your human-shaped ivory tower. Marley probably never risked you on the battlefield when they could just use your transformation blast. War is just the press of a button or the pull of a trigger for you. Clinical, distant."

"I made a mockery of your Ackermann bitch. And I did it while she tried to fuck me from behind. Let's see what you've got, Eren Jaeger."

Bertholdt rose to his not inconsiderable height, clenched hands covered in Armin's blood and brains. His rangy arms posed in a classical boxing stance.

"Come on!" he goaded his shorter opponent.

But Eren was never the hot-headed fool people mistook him for. He'd made terrible mistakes in the heat of passions that would burn ordinary men to dust. His mistakes made him an incomparably wise opponent and his lucid dream training only made him more deadly. Could eons of imaginary combat conditioning actually pay-off?*

Bertholdt threw a perfect long jab right at Eren's chin to test the waters.

Eren bobbed down, dashed inside his long range attack and burst upwards with terrific force.

His left fist collided in the small gap between Bert's floating ribs and his pelvic bone and ruptured his liver. The soldier had pushed every iota of channelled power through his foe's abdomen.

Bert hunched as he dry-heaved and sweat drenched him from every pore, toxins exploding through his body, his offence halted and his defence utterly annihilated.

Eren twisted and threw a tight, arcing left uppercut while exploding up from the balls of his feet. The gazelle punch rocketed up under Bertholdt's jaw and snapped his head back - but the big bastard remained on his feet; his endurance remarkable.

Scything his upper body into an infinity symbol, Eren charged up his momentum and fired off four one-two haymaker combos into Bert's chin, alternating from right to left; these blows would have broken the sound barrier in his Titan form. The first two made Bert drop his hands limply, the third and fourth caused his knees to buckle and close in. The fifth and six sent him staggering back, blood and spittle flying from his mouth and the final two laid him out on his front as he was sent spinning, retching and tumbling to the ground.

They did.*

Even half comatose, Bertholdt still found his gangly self in a strange sleeping position, buttocks facing the heavens, legs folded underneath, arms splayed and face eating dirt. Eren placed his heel over the base of Bert's skull and stomped down five times with extreme prejudice.

"Don't worry, Bertholdt. I wasn't about to let this confrontation get drawn out. You're as you well noted, far too dangerous for that. Why indulge in a drawn-out fight with a superior enemy when you can just exploit weakness and cut their legs out from beneath them."

Eren sat down away from the steaming, twitching corpse and watched as Armin himself finally began to smoke and crackle with healing sparks, regaining the will to live. Armin sat up slowly, feeling out his new teeth and eye, scratching at the dried blood that coated his face.

"So Bertholdt works me over to a state as good as death while you come along to take him out for me. Just as before, even like those cretins who were always bullying us, eh, Eren?"

"I told you nothing had changed. Well, Armin, do you remember what you'd forgotten?"

"I do. I'm surprised at my own pain tolerance. I didn't think I had it in me. But you're right again. You've made a disturbing habit of it lately. I can only be brave when I'm afraid. Or when I think there'll be nothing left to remember me by. I thought I had defeated my self-loathing in Trost... But it always comes back, Eren. Why...?"

"Demons are called as such because they never leave you entirely. We all fight an endless battle within ourselves. You see the true war, Armin, has never been against shifters and soldiers. They're but crude matter, obstacles against which we test ourselves. The true war: is waged in the hearts of all living things. Against our own natures, light and dark. We are the battlegrounds and if we fall Paradis falls with us. And it will be such a quiet thing. They'll make sure the world never knew we existed and it will herald a darkness worse than death. The fact that we lost because for one instance we doubted and prevaricated over taking quick and decisive action."

"...You and your damn speeches..." Armin muttered enviously. "Couldn't you have written me notes in Trost?"

It started with small chuckles from both of them, then exploded into full-on infectious laughter and it felt so damn good to be that carefree with his fist friend in so long. Nothing of their old friendship remained. It had burnt away along with Armin's dream of the ocean's purity above Shiganshina. But there was hope for something new once more.

Bertholdt stirred languidly, groaning from his thundering head. Armin jumped up at the noise, splitting his own lower lip to draw a drop of blood; gold electrical discharges crackling over his body.

"I can use the Colossus Titan now, Bertholdt. Come at me again and I'll turn you to ash!"

The Warrior tottered to his feet, shaking himself clear. "You can't be rid of me that easily, Armin. I'm part of you now."

"Become a part of this!" Armin spat, light spilling from his eyes and mouth as he went nuclear.

They felt the glow of the sun on their skin but with none of the harshness as the world was returned to nothing. But instead of wholesale destruction, the three men found themselves among the dunes of the Path once more.

"Looks like you still have some unresolved issues, Armeen...! Bertholdt japed cruelly. "You two are going to make all the same mistakes as the old empire. You'll both come to think of yourselves as heroes, deliverers, divine saviours... But I know what you truly are. And I know what you are not. And you are not... Gods!"

Armin and Eren stood shoulder to shoulder, perplexed at Bert's victorious and challenging statement. Then Eren spun on the blonde, eyes wild.

"You... You're not a god?!" he demanded, seizing Armin by his shirt. "You lied to me?!" he uttered, voice breaking.

Arlelt, to his credit, fixed an expression of intensest loathing on his features. Stone-faced and furious at his act being "revealed".

"How... dare you!" Eren vociferated, casting his friend at Bert, who staggered but managed to retain his footing.

"Hey! It was your stupid plan! Trying to get us replaced as figure-heads in the Church of The Walls!"

"What?" Bertholdt quipped glibly; utterly confused.

"Oh, oi, that's - ! My plan! My plan was that we should lie low!" Eren defended, circling Armin, gesturing wildly.

Behind them, Bertholdt crossed his arms and enjoyed the fracas like it was a free dinner and a show.

"But your plan! Was to run off!" Jaeger kept up his verbal assault. "And be all: 'oh, look at me! Look at me! I'm a god'!"

Armin walked away from conflict, only to turn and spit: "that's not true!"

"No?! Who are you kidding? Isolating yourself! Running off to play house with a sleeping beauty! You're buying your own con!"

"That was purely for the sake of Intel! At least I'm not dating mine!"

"I...! Oooh... That's a low blow, Armin. Even for you! Guess you could hear me while Bert gave you some tender love and care?"

"Subtlety was never your strong point, Eren. You're keeping this power a secret from the military and you don't think there'll be consequences?!"

"Listen, Mr High And Mighty...! We'd both be striding into the palatial complex in Mitras, at the very top of the junta's food chain if you'd just listened to me!" he punctuated with a punishing smack to the back of Armin's coconut.

Their ambling argument had taken them right past an amused Bertholdt who was now smiling like a cat with cream and a canary at his two enemies' squabbles.

"Mmmm...!" he remarked slyly.

"Well!" Armin retorted: "now you've got all the precious power you've ever desired and Historia to boot!" Eren rolled his eyes and turned away from Armin's jealousy. "So what do you need me for!" he concluded with a vengeful slap across the back of Eren's melon when he dared turn his back on him.

"Well! Maybe I don't need you anymore!" Eren fired back, locking horns with Armin quite literally as he shoved his forehead into the blonde's.

"Well why don't you run back to the orphanage and I'll stay on my beach as a hermit!" Armin butted back. "And we'll both get what we want!" he punctuated with a shove to Eren's chest that carried the taller brunette backwards several steps.

"Fine with me, pal!" Eren spat hatefully, seizing twin handfuls of Armin's shirt again and casting him back in return.

Armin back-hand slapped Eren across the cheek.

"Ooh!" Bert commiserated with Eren's reddening face.

"It's fine with me too!" Eren turned the other cheek and gave Armin the palm of his hand.

"Ouch!" Bert grinned as Armin tried not to collapse, pole-axed, before grabbing Eren's collar and socking him on the jaw.

"Ah, fine!" Armin burst out viciously, pulling back his left again for another blow while Eren seized his friend's shirt and prepared to do the same with his right.

Bert couldn't help but cackle at their idiocy.

"All... RIGHT!" They shouted simultaneously, winding up and throwing their punches.

Only for them to arc into a semi-circle and collide as one with Bert's gobsmacked face and blast him off his feet.

Bert sprawled in the sand from the double KO, astonished that they'd once again bamboozled him into a humiliating subjugation.

"Tie him up!" Eren yelled, summoning vines from the sand of Paths, dousing Bert with the cold reality of his situation, ghost or not.

If I don't stop them here. The world's done for. My father will be...

Armin reached him first, bindings ready to loop around him but Bert surged up, his long left leg exploding into Armin's stomach, throwing the shorter teen back and causing him to up-chuck his non-existent breakfast again.

Eren was a far more deadly fighter, sliding in next to and behind his prone form before wrapping the vine around his neck in one move, trying to brace his feet against Bert's shoulders and throttle him.

Bert reared and bucked, ensuring Eren couldn't lock down his attack even as the rope of plant-matter cut into his windpipe and carotid arteries. The Warrior scrambled backwards like a crab, until Eren was forced to fall underneath him. Then he reached back with his left hand and clawed at Eren's face until he found what he was desperately searching for. His thumb dug into the corner of Eren's mouth then snuck underneath, fish-hooking him. Eren tried to twist away but Bertholdt was relentless, ripping the inner-lining of his cheek and controlling his opponent's head.

Eren tried for a rear triangle-hold with his calves but Bertholdt finally overcame his opponent's pain tolerance when his thumb ripped through Eren's cheek and his grip became even more assured. Even from his lying position, Bert was able to roll and flip Eren over him, rabbit punching the soldier again and again even when he felt Eren biting the fingers off his trapped hand. Hoover tore his maimed appendage away from the beast and proceeded with double axe-handle strikes and elbow drops, smashing Eren's head into the sand.

But he had forgotten the third party. He was relishing fracturing Eren's skull when he felt the cord of vines around his throat rise and quiver then spool.

He glanced up to see Armin full-on sprinting... away from him...? While he was clutching the far end of the vine wrapped around his -

NO!

Bertholdt only managed to raise his hands half-way before Armin ran out of slack and was lifted clean off his feet backwards when momentum caught up.

The past holder's spinal column collapsed like a deflated accordion.

Armin breathed heavily as he held onto the vine for dear life, still trying to retain the tension. Unwilling to believe he had truly killed his arch-nemesis.

The dark Warrior knelt with his arms thrown back, face staring into the starry expanse.

"No-one was truly in the wrong, here, Bertholdt..." Armin whispered. "Not in a world this cruel. And we must be cruel; if we're to thrive!"

He released the noose and staggered to help Eren who was crawling towards him. Steam occluding his shredded face.

Bertholdt's corpse began to dissolve like a Titan's and be swept to the winds.

"Technique's worth... jack-shit when a big man... gets a hold of you..." Eren groaned as Armin threw one of his friend's arms around his shoulder and began to half carry him.

"You did... Well... Armin."

"Your set-up brought me the time I needed... Eren... This took place deep in my unconscious mind, didn't it? How much will I remember?"

"I can't say... Bertholdt got to your brain and he fought like hell to keep you under... We have to expect some permanent changes to your persona. How do you feel about... Annie?"

"The girl who's partly responsible for twenty percent of our population dying? My grandfather, who taught me of our world, included? The girl who murdered Ness and Sis, cracked my gourd open; likely had a hand in Marco's death? That Annie? Can you sense how charitable I feel, ya blockhead?"

"Heh... You'll remember what you learned of yourself. Just not how it came about, thankfully. I think... we're going to be... just fine, Armin."

AN: The Crimson King has returned to us! Bert just can't be beat alone! We'll be checking in with Jean, Connie, Sasha, Levi and of course: Historia next!