The next day, as early as he could, Leo disappeared, leaving the internment zone through the same alley as before.
"I'll have to leave some time at the end of the day in order to find a better entrance back. It matters not now..." He says jumping over the wall and heading straight to the library. He had to study everything from scratch, learn the Marleyan way of thinking, how they see history, how they live. Leo had the chance to interview Marleyan soldiers whom were captured when they first landed on Paradise island however he could never extract their true essence out of them. Who would ever call you a devil to your face when they have a gun pointed at their heads? Luckily enough Liberio was an effectively built town, right next to the main library there was the state archives and not far from there the military centre. On the first day he would study their history and costume.
"Bite your tongue and blaspheme against your fellow men. They are the island devils and you are a Marleyan, you've never been Eldian, you must never be suspicious. Being an Eldian in this country is the same as being livestock. One step out of bound could mean disaster so for that freedom I'll bite my tongue and bend my back begging for forgiveness."
"I cannot carry your colours on my back yet." He whispers under breath thinking about the wings of freedom and how they've become the symbol of Paradise. He would wear them but how easy would it be for someone to go on Paradise island in a scouting mission and immediately recognise them.
"I feel like a bird who clips it's own wings to fly. I'll eat them and I'll feed on them and those wings one day will grow again." Leo raises his head and looks at his 'fellow' Marleyans. That feeling of hate, the disgust, the pity the anger; that's how they see Eldians. Leo brands that feeling on his brain so that he may remember the faces of Marleyans the day he'll have to give the same look to his brethren.
"Excuse me, are you still reading this book?" A voice wakes Leo up from his hate filled stupor. A young girl was holding 'History of Marley's wars against Eldia'.
"No, go ahead and take it, I've already finished it." Leo answers going back to his pile of books without even looking up at who that was.
"Thank you very much." The girl says before leaving. From further away Leo could hear:
"Thanks Pieck, you're a life saver. Without this book I would have never been able to finish studying for the final test."
"Pieck? The cart titan?" Leo raises his face and sees three warriors, Pieck, Marcel and Bertolt. "She was there wasn't she? When..." Leo's right eye started to cry, only a few tears which he couldn't stop no matter how much he wiped them away.
"We die trusting the living who follow to find meaning in our lives! This is the sole method in which we can rebel against this cruel world! My soldiers rage! My soldiers scream! My soldiers fight!" A voice rings inside Leo's head and for a second he sees a glimpse of hell. Rocks flying towards a mass of scouts charging towards the Beast titan. The massacre that took place while retaking Shinganshina district from the titans.
"I'll make them suffer captain Erwin. I'll carry your memory on my shoulder too." Leo should have stopped but his finger nails were ripping away from his fingers as he was pulling on the table. He caught glimpses of those who lived and died facing the Beast titan at Shinganshina. He could feel all of their fear, their sorrow, their pain. For a second he felt the left side of his body gone then his face, his shoulder, his leg.
"You wanted me to remember them too? I'll remember them all. I'll see them, I promise I'll see them live a long life." Leo takes the books with him and leave remembering he has to find a way inside the internment zone without jumping off a building again. Patrolling around the outer walls he discovers a bush which grew over and through a segment of a wall. Going inside the bush reveals how the roots pushed through the mortar and separated the bricks making them loose enough to be removed without collapsing the whole structure.
Back at home during dinner:
"I've seen you've brought home a lot of books on history. It is good... learning a lot about our past can help you."
"I am no dog that needs to look at his master to learn how to walk."
"Tommy! I know you're angry you weren't chosen as a warrior cadet but you can't talk like that."
"You're right. I'm out of myself, like I'm a different person... I'm sorry." Leo says knowing the people in front of him were innocent, they shouldn't have to suffer his scorn and rage. Late at night however Leo was restless and he could not sleep. He kept seeing all their faces, the beast titan cheering over their corpses. He needed vengeance and he needed it now. He left the internment zone and headed back to the abandoned factory.
"This body is strong, but I have to test it out, know it's limits. Tommy, you were a warrior cadet, you must have trained hard, so share with me some of your secrets." Leo started running, calculating how fast, how strong, how good at climbing he was. Throughout his life as a journalist Leo had to cross a few boundaries to learn the truth. He had to learn now to sneak in and out of the different walls without permits. He had to learn how to forge said permits, documents, paperwork. He developed the ability to reproduce every single writing style he saw by reading it just once. A journalist like him had to tell a thousand stories from a thousand different people, he wouldn't have been able to do it without becoming the people he wrote about. Maybe that is why Eren chose him, maybe just as Leo saw glimpses of commander Erwin's memories, so too Eren saw Leo's.
"This body is strong and resistant, smaller than my old one too. You've given me a perfect gift Eren, this will do to fulfil my promise to you." Leo returned home without his parents even realising he was gone. As soon as the next day starts he was ready to put his plan into action.
Leo will infiltrate the state archives, steal documents and find a secondary person who's identity he could steal. Leo had to enter the army, get closer to his targets and steal their powers before they could commit the massacre that lead to the fall of wall Maria.
There is a public are where people come to drop and retrieve documents such as birth certificates, marriage certificates and so forth. Leo makes his way through the public area studying it without making himself noticed. If you keep walking straight, go from one area to the other, even if you walk in a circle people won't notice you if you are determined. He moves from room to room clockwise until he notices a door which leads to a private area. After having studied the building enough he leaves waiting for nightfall. Once the archives were closed to the public he makes his move. He returns to the off limits area and checks the door. It was locked but the door was nine years old. When Marleyan soldiers were captured they helped Paradise improve their technology. One of the first things they've improved were their locks so that Marley soldiers could not easily steal informations from them with their primitive locks. Leo worked on locks nine years more advanced than these, it was a child's play to open them. Once the door was opened Leo crosses to the other side and keeps walking. He kept to himself and luckily he didn't met anyone. If someone was approaching he would enter a side room, change direction, hide. Although Leo was a inhabiting a foreign body, the movements he made were still his. His ears were already train to pick up the most silent of sounds. The floor was stone and marble, it was impossible for a guard to approach him without Leo hearing the guard first. As to how Leo could walk around unnoticed, he was wearing socks with their soles covered with a secondary layer of cloth. Lions are after all cats and as all cats they are silent.
Leo finally reaches the archives and starts reading through them. He focuses on possible targets to steal their identity, orphans that joined the military, Marleyans from inland or from outside the country. The requirements were simple, the target had to be young and have little to no family. Not very hard to find such people in times of war. Many children lost their parents only to join the same meat grinder which killed them. War is a business which creates people desperate enough to fuel it. After a quick read he finds three possible targets for him to steal their identity: Richard, Emil and Gustav. Richard was the son of Marleyans which lived abroad with whom he lost contact. Emil was a survivor after his whole family was killed in a terrorist attack against Marley and Gustav was an orphan abandoned at birth who was proven to be Marleyan.
After finding his three possible targets Leo leaves the archives without leaving a trace behind. All the documents were returned to their place, all the locks were closed again and all possible traces were wiped out. Before heading back home and calling it a day Leo breaks into a pharmacy.
"I'm sorry mister doctor, but your business will have to take a loss." He steals the necessary to produce a strong sedative which works fast enough to floor a raging horse in moments. He took enough to double the strength of the sedative but made sure to make his theft as unnoticeable as possible. After stealing the medicine and knowing the location of his target he heads back home and rests for what remains of the night.
Once again he leave the house and prepares his sedative. The dose was incredibly powerful, nearly lethal. In a world where his targets could turn into fifteen metres giants, knocking them out in a second rather than three could be the difference between life and death. Once outside the internment zone he goes through town and starts stalking his target. The first to ignore was Gustav, he had too many friends to be replaced. The second one was Emil and someone wrote the papers wrong since Emile was actually Emilia... a woman. This leaves him with his third target, Richard. He was a loner and barely interacted with anyone. Both Tommy and Richard had the same hair colour, a light brown with shades of blond towards the end, you could barely notice the blond though unless the hair was really short. The third nail was where Richard lived. He lived alone in a small house he inherited from a dead relative on the outskirts of town. He was the perfect target.
At night, Leo entered Richard's house, knocked him out and brought him back to the internment zone.
"I'm sorry I have to do this. You were good to me for the few days we've interacted but I cannot be traced back to this place. People cannot know I'm an Eldian. I have to die and live another life again, only this way I can save them." His eye was tearing up again but this time there were no memories, Leo was sad. He injects them with the sedative directly killing his parents on the spot. It was painless and quick, they died in their sleep immediately.
"I hope you'll dream forever and I hope your dream will never be a nightmare. Your memory as brief as it might be shall forever be a burden on my soul." He punches the bed next to them. "If only you weren't born Eldians." Leo says with the hate and anger he should now feel towards all of them. With their deaths Leo could finally become a Marleyan without any possibility of people finding out who he really was. In the end Leo places Richard in his bed, covers the floor in alcohol and sets it on fire before leaving.
'Eldian devils burn in hell' he writes on the side of the house hoping this being a crime committed by an extremist group of Marleyans won't lead to thorough investigations. The fire spreads and Leo was already heading to his new house, sitting on the side of the same bed Richard was sleeping in before he drugged him. Leo tries to put his head on the pillow but he couldn't help but see the profile of his parents as they laid in bed motionless.