-Sera-

"I told you! It was a giant human hand! I'm not fuckin' kidding!" Brendan said to the stranded group in front of him. When the Raven had returned without the Onyx Guard, people were wondering if she had died or had abandoned them. However, Brendan's story about finding a huge portal underneath the island which spawned some sort of giant hand that had taken the woman sparked some fear into the group. It could have been a locust trap.

"Alright people, back to your stations." Frederick waved off the group, "And get some shut-eye. Brendan, a word?"

The leader of the stranded isles walked alongside his best engineer towards the repair garage, where he and his apprentices were trying to get the geobot to open. Right now, it was on his work desk, surrounded by tools, wires and a bottle of water. It seems that trying to get it open, even after Ashley had told them the codes, was still a hassle. Typical of COG machines, only work the people who made them.

"Can't get it open?" Brendan said, identifying the elephant in the room.

"Yep." Frederick sat down dejectedly and ran his fingers through his deep gray hair. "Look Brendan, I didn't see what you saw down there in the caves. All I know is that Ashley has vanished into thin air, and the only thing that we could use to bring her back now looks like it was thrown inside a trash compactor." When Brendan had told the stranded scouts and Frederick that something had "taken" Ashley, they had raced down to the device to see if they could bring her back. What might have been a mighty piece of machinery was now a crumpled ruin, looking like something had squashed it inwards. As soon as they saw it, they knew that it was dead.

"We still have the geobot." Brendan said, looking at the bright side.

"Yeah, and we can't open it without someone from the COG, and the Sovereign is still two days away. For all we know, Ashley could be dying, dead, or worse."

"Could there be more of those devices on Sera?" Brendan threw out a hypothesis.

"You're asking the wrong guy, Brendan. If there were, we wouldn't be able to get there. The closest continent is five hours away by helicopter, and even then our Ravens don't have much fuel." Frederick put the geobot down on the ground and stared at it. "Our only hope to finding what happened to Ashley is waiting for the Sovereign."

Brendan sighed. "I'll tell the others." And then he left.

"'Ey Fred, since when did you care about the COG lady?" One of his apprentices, a young woman with a scar on her lip, asked him. Her tone of voice showed that she was rather indignant that he actually cared about the Onyx Guard. "They haven't done shit for us, and now all of a sudden we've got us an epidemic. The COG can take their fancy fucking thing back and leave us alone." Frederick could only smirk at the apprentice when she turned to fix the off-roadster. While he was no fan of the COG himself, he would rather deal with fellow human beings rather than the locust, or worse, the lambent. Ashley was a spiteful bitch, but she was very pro-human. Something that he liked in her.

He made a mental note to himself that once the COG came and fixed the geobot, he would go with them to find Ashley.


-Unknown world-

For the past two hours, Ashley had been listening to whatever this Erwin Smith had been saying. Shadis and two other people that had come along with Smith were also present; a woman wearing glasses, with brown hair and seemed to be in a permanent state of excitement. The moment that she saw Ashley, she had practically squealed in happiness to see that the report that Shadis sent of a "black-armored woman with scary guns" was true. The other was a man, rather shot, with a dark crop-cut that reached just to his eyebrows, his eyes narrow and had a deep scowl on his face. He didn't seem to like how he couldn't see O'Malley's face, considering that she was wearing her helmet.

When Shadis had sent the report on Ashley's urging after the ticker incident, he had also sent a piece of the little monsters with it in a box. When Erwin had picked up the strange limb from the folded letter, he called for Hange and Levi and instantly set out for the trainee camp. Something of this magnitude couldn't be ignored, and as he talked to the strange woman, named Ashley O'Malley, he could remember the letter that Shadis sent.

...

Erwin, come to the 104th Training Camp this instant.

Something's happened. I don't know what's going on but there's some strange black-armored woman with terrifying weapons here.

She says that we're in danger of something terrible.

Something worse than titans.

I've sent a letter to Zackley about it, but the general might be busy so I sent you this piece of evidence.

I have no idea what it is, but she does.

I've got a bad feeling about this.

...

Of course, Erwin had contacted Darius Zackley about it, but the general was busy dealing with other stuff and would meet with Ashley another time. Even as exciting as this is, talking to someone so unknown, Erwin couldn't help but feel something was wrong with O'Malley.

She seemed... unhinged.

Like she was expecting something to pop out of the ground and kill her.

"And you have no explanation to you getting here?" Erwin asked Ashley, who remained silent for a little bit until she answered.

"Look, where I come from there was some sort of giant portal, and I know that sounds totally stupid to just say but it's true. One of your titans grabbed me, ate me, and then I killed it and broke free. Two of the trainees found me, brought me back to the camp where I killed the little bastards and now we're here." Ashley said plainly. Erwin seemed to be very interested with what she had to say, which kept her own interests in this world.

"There can't be any titans here." Short and grumpy frowned out.

"Well, you can talk to Sasha and Connie about that. They saw the titan that ate me. Connie's still got that bruise from when I socked him in the mouth." Ashley said, and Shadis's mouth smirked ever so slightly. He was already liking O'Malley.

"We can discuss incidents later." Erwin brushed off. "What we want to know, Miss O'Malley, is just who and what you are. And we need the truth, not because of what we are afraid of, but because if you really are alone here, then you're going to need all the help you can get." Erwin explained. His cool, calm persona really did stand out to Ashley. She was always around those who were temperamental, always ready to jump the gun. Not Erwin. He came in here knowing what he wanted to know from Ashley. Everything down from her face to the guns on her back to her allegiances to whatever superiors that she might have.

"Alright then." She said, and leaned on her chair. "How exactly can you help me?"

"By telling us what you know." The short man said.

"I'm not telling you everything." That was the first thing she demanded to them. "What I can tell you are a couple of things that won't get me into hot water here."

"Like what?"

"The war, my weapons and myself. That's it. Everything else is classified." Ashley said, and Erwin's hypothesis was correct; she was a soldier for some sort of army. By the looks of it, she seemed to be a member of an elite force, much like Levi's own squadron. Her use of the term "classified" would probably annoy the crap out of Levi and only serve to fuel the curious fires of Hange on what could O'Malley possibly be hiding.

"TELL ME!" Hange made herself known by slamming her hands down and tossing the ticker limb at Ashley, who caught it fast. "What is that thing? What's your armor like? Can you show me your face?"

"I believe that Hange is correct on a certain matter." Erwin said. "We are trying to build a bridge of trust here, after all. You wearing that helmet of yours puts you on a defensive hold. It makes you unapproachable." He explained, trying to coax out some sort of method for the enigmatic woman to show herself. "If we are to start working together then we'll need to know if you really are human, as Shadis said."

"Very well then." Ashley responded and pulled off her helmet. It revealed her heavily scarred visage to the three of them, Hange letting out a small gasp while Levi seemed to be impressed with the woman's scars. Another check off the O'Malley list for Erwin. She was experienced in fighting wars. She couldn't have possibly gotten those scars from herself. He realized that in another life, somewhere, Ashley would have been beautiful. But the horrors of war and the toll of battle had robbed her of that chance, turning her into something else.

"Good. Now, onto the next part." Erwin said. "These things, these tickers as you call them, are part of something greater?"

"Yes. Back where I'm from, we fought against an enemy that had a single goal in mind: outright annihilation of humanity."

"Sounds like the titans." Levi said softly.

"Yeah, except titans don't gave guns that could liquefy you into a red paste." Ashley grumbled to the shorter man, memories of fighting against the Locust bringing back some long forgotten pains. There was more than one reason to why Ashley didn't want to talk about the Locust War.

"Would you mind explaining your enemy?" Erwin asked, and for a moment, Ashley seemed dumbfounded, but sighed out. If she was going to survive here with both titans and what could possibly be a locust resurgence, then she would need to tell these people everything. Not one detail could be left out, because she knew that if she held back then it could lead to countless deaths. And so, with a heavy sigh, she asked for one thing.

"Could I have a glass of water before I talk?"

"Sure."

...

It had reached night time on the second day that Ashley arrived here when she had finished explaining her story. The four people in front of her were, more or less, stunned beyond words. Ashley had given them a world where war was not only a thing to live by, but it seemed to be a constant on her world, named Sera. Ashley had described it as a formerly bountiful world before it became a planetary wasteland, a result of an eighty-year war that was backed by another, far more gruesome war that sent the planet's civilization into a chaotic mess.

The more Ashley talked, the more flabbergasted Erwin seemed to be. She had left out nothing in her recollection. She had told them of E-Day, and the total war that followed. How billions of people had died in the first years of the ensuing planetwide fighting, and how the death toll only increased. Her family, friends, comrades, superiors. All dead.

And then the true horror story came when she revealed who she was fighting; the Locust. Thankfully, she had a picture of one to show them. A six-foot tall monstrosity, covered in gray scales and armor that glowed orange. A mouth full of razor-sharp canines and red-orange eyes that showed nothing but hatred. This was an enemy, as Ashley described, that would stop at nothing to make sure that every last human was dead. The things she said that the locust did with humans, even Levi felt his blood run cold by the sheer bloodlust and brutality that the locust would throw at humanity. Ashley went further describing their ranks, their weapons, and even their beasts of war, to the mighty brumak that stood taller than titans, to the deadly ticker, which was revealed to be a scurrying bomb used by locust to kill convoys.

Ashley had spared no details on other things as well. Along with the locust, she talked about the spine-chilling lambent, a form of disease that made creatures mutate into monsters that would only get stronger the more you fought them. She also revealed that the locust were subterranean, something that instantly sent bad vibes in Levi's mind. Their home, the huge cave system called the Hollow, created by gigantic worms, had flooded in a last-ditch effort to stop the war, costing humanity their last bastion of hope, the city of Jacinto. The COG, the Coalition of Ordered Governments, had their part in her tale as well. She had talked about how one man, named Marcus Fenix, had given humanity their first victory over the locust with something called the "lightmass bombing", and then using the "Hammer of Dawn" to kill a massive lambent creature to flood the Hollow.

She even told them about the portals. Humongous hexagons made out of black metal that would suck everything in. She said that there might be one on this world to bring her back home.

The decades-long war between the humans of Sera and the locust was a story that Erwin would forever hold in the darkest depths of his mind. He would have never guessed that this sort of warfare existed out of the walls. He knew what titans were, but this was something far greater. If humanity on Sera, fully armed and ready for combat, had barely survived against the locust, then the humanity here would stand no chance.

It became apparent to him, in light of recent events, that Ashley was pretty much the sole hope he had in case the locust would indeed return here at the walls. She knew how to fight them, and how to kill them.

Hange had stood there, taking all the information in, her eyes growing wider as Ashley told them the horrors of her war. Levi, master of playing stoic, seemed to be disgusted at the tales of locust butchery on humans.

"Holy shit." Hange whispered out. "You survived all that?"

"If you call what happened to me surviving, then yeah, I did." Ashley, absent-minded, rubbed one of her scars.

"And the locust," Erwin said, "did they have a leader?"

"They had a couple. I told you about most of their generals, like RAAM, but even generals are given orders by someone. The locust are in servitude by a queen, Queen Myrrah, the ruler of all the locust armies." Ashley explained. She didn't know much about Myrrah other then she was the locust's head honcho after all her generals were cut down by the COG. She had been given orders to shoot on sight, but she had never seen Myrrah.

"They have a queen? I thought all locust were male." Hange said.

"Most of the locust. There have been reports of female locust soldiers, but the only well-known female locust are the beserkers and Myrrah."

"And Myrrah, she's...?" Erwin guessed.

"A complete scumbag." Ashley answered without any hesitation. "Total genocidal pyschopath and species supremacist. She hates humans with a passion."

"I see." Erwin said, digesting everything that Ashley had said. "In light of recent events, I will grant you amnesty in our walls as a sovereign citizen. Shadis will be in charge of your life here and your training evaluation for the new recruits, adding on to their titan-slaying skills. However, this will not come without cost. If the locust do return then you will be in charge of what happens then. We have never fought the locust and you have." Ashley breathed out a sigh of relief. She would have no problem being in command if the locust truly show their faces. Namely, it would grant her two things; more information about the walls, and reason behind the locust coming here.

"So I'm in?" She asked.

Erwin smiled.

"You're in."

...

"Do you trust her?" Erwin said to Levi. After granting Ashley her wish, they had left the training camp on horseback. The sun had dimmed, and it would be some time before they got to headquarters, and Erwin wanted to know how Levi and Hange thought of their newest, strangest comrade.

"She spins a good sob story." Levi spoke, and reached down to his flask to have a drink of water. "I wonder how she'll do against titans."

"She's so FASCINATING!" Hange squealed, much to Levi's annoyance. "Erwin, please, you MUST let me go back there and see how she works that armor of her's! And those guns! Oh, those strange exotic beauties! I should have asked if I could take one!"

"Not on your life, shitty glasses." Levi shot back. "There's no way I'm letting you take guns from a stranger so that you can kill yourself with them."

"Aw, is Levi worried about me!" Hange smiled at him.

"The only thing I'm worried about are the trainees. If I were one of them, I would be suspicious as hell as who the black-armored woman was. And no, Erwin, I don't trust her. She might have spilled most of her guts out to us, but that doesn't mean that she told us everything. For all we know the "locust" could be an elaborate ruse." Levi didn't trust Ashley simply because he had just met her, and would take longer to gain some sort of bond between the two.

"We'll see." Erwin said.

"She said that the locust were subterranean, living under the surface. We should check what we can, make sure that she's not telling us that they're here already." Levi said to Erwin, and then turned to Hange. "We should go to the Underground. Set up some sort of watch."

"We can take Ashley tomorrow, since she knows the locust better than anyone."

...

The trainees themselves were completely in the dark about this. Many of them had gone to bed when Erwin and company had decided to leave and Ashley had decided to take a rest in one of the dorms. When she was a cadet, there were no male and female separation, and this thinking was currently overriding her tired brain. Unaware that she had walked into the male dorm without a care in the world, rubbing her spine from sitting down for several hours.

"What are you doing in here?" Ashley turned around to see Armin behind her, holding a large book. He seemed to be confused to why she was standing in front of him.

"Going to catch some z's. What's that book?" Ashley answered and asked at the same time.

"O-Oh, nothing." Armin quickly replied, which sent curious vibes down Ashley's spine. "The girl's dorm is over there." Armin pointed.

"So you guys divide by gender? Alright." Ashley shrugged, and Armin visibly relaxed. In the moment, Ashley snatched the book away from the young blond. Armin gasped and lunged to grab his book back, but with held at bay by her superior strength with a hand on his chest. She opened the book to reveal some rather obvious information, such as the ocean, desert and other stuff that were commonplace on a planet.

"Why do you have a book on this stuff?" Ashley asked, genuinely confused.

"It's information about the outside world, where you're from." Armin answered, in a tone that said that he was terrified that she had found it. "Here it's considered heretical to have stuff like this. People have been killed because they knew too much, like the oceans and the burning sands." Armin stared at that book as if his life depended on it. He seemed to be very attached to it. "And... my grandfather gave that book to me before he died." So the book had a degree of sentimental value towards Armin. To that, Ashley could respect. She didn't have anything to remember her own family except for static memories.

"Relax kiddo. I ain't telling anyone about this. This is between you and me." Ashley patted his shoulder and handed back his book.

"Can you," Armin said warily and averted his eyes, "tell me about the outside? If that's not too much to ask."

"Wanna head inside and talk about it?" Ashley smiled behind her helmet, and Armin smiled back.

She followed him inside to reveal that some of the trainees had surrounded two of the kids, and if Armin's face showed anything, he knew who those two were. There was a bruise covering the eye of the one on the floor, the one with the gray and brown undercut who was busy clutching his face in pain. The one above him was clutching his fists in rage as he towered over the injured lad, his green eyes burning with indignant fury. Undercut was too busy trying to alleviate the pain rather than listening to the other kid's violent screaming. She also saw that Mikasa, the girl she encountered in the dining hall, was holding green eyes back from doing anything dumber.

"Eren, stop!" Mikasa yelled, trying to tame her friend. "It's not worth it!"

"You heard what he said!" Green eyes, now revealed as Eren, raged. "Talking about the Scouts being a waste of resources! They're heroes, you stupid coward!"

Ashley sighed. She had seen this many times in her life as a soldier, especially from normal gears. Always bickering and biting about who did this and who said what, and their general distrust of the Onyx Guard. She'd seen it all, and had hoped to leave those instances behind her, but seeing it in front of her again just brought back some rather annoying memories. Trainees were supposed to get along and help one another, ignoring what they felt was right or wrong and working for the greater good.

"Is there a problem here trainee?" Ashley's voice instantly silenced the crowd. Eren and the rest turned their heads to see the Onyx Guard standing there with Armin behind her, arms crossed on her chest. She seemed to be in a bitter mood, which surprised Armin because she sounded happy when he found her outside.

"What are you doing here?" Eren asked, not sounding interested at all.

"I'm here making sure you people don't knock each other's lights out before bedtime." Ashley grunted. She walked past Eren to offer a hand to the boy on the floor.

"What's your name?" Ashley asked, and undercut glared at Eren for a few seconds before answering with;

"Jean. Jean Kirstein." Jean said to Ashley, covering the eye that Eren had hit.

"Get yourself some water to wash that bruise, Jean. It'll help soothe the swelling." Ashley gave some advice for Jean, who felt his mouth open slightly. For far, his career in this place had gotten him totally downtrodden by either Shadis and his sadistic forms of training, or trainees like Eren who would blindly fly into a titan's mouth without a care in the world because it would be "heroic". As far as he could see, the only ones here that had a shred of intelligence were the two people standing in front of him: Armin Arlert, frail as a daffodil, and the strange-as-hell Ashley O'Malley.

"Thanks." Jean nodded and left to get some water from the local well, Marco following him.

"Alright," Ashley sighed out, "someone mind telling me just what the hell happened here?" Everyone's eyes shot wide. Since when did the stranger give out orders? But since she sounded sincere when she gave Jean the advice to get the swelling down, it seemed rude to not answer her. Still, nobody answered. Ashley rubbed her temples through her helmet.

"Could one of you imbeciles say something?" Ashley growled out. It was late, she was tired, and the sooner she dealt with this the sooner she could go to sleep.

"Jean said some rather charged things about the Survey Corps, and Eren got mad about it so he punched him." One of the trainees in the back said. Instantly Ashley rounded her eyes on Eren, who did nothing but glare back at the Onyx Guard. Truthfully, Ashley didn't give a flying fuck about any part of the military branches here on the planet and would rather not deal with these types of situations, but since she was here now, it might as well be dealt with. Erwin, Levi and Hange, the three of them were part of the Survey Corps and they called themselves the "Scouts", so they must hold some sort of personal sway with some of the rookies.

"Mind telling me why you hit him?" Ashley asked.

"He insulted the Scouts. Jean called them wastes of resources and was going off on how we could be spending our lives doing better things, like living. Tch, like he could know how to live. We're cattle behind these walls." Eren answered, his brow furrowed and tone angered. He clearly was a fan of the Scouts and seemed to hold a far more zealous belief on them. Jean must have known that he would have struck a nerve with Eren.

"Look kiddo, there's a couple rules in life that you're gonna learn." Ashley said, and it was more of a statement to all of the trainees rather than just Eren. "First, people are going to say what they think and they don't care about what you think. And why should they? Jean made fun of the Scouts, so what? Is he joining them? No. So quit making a big deal out of it."

Eren opened his mouth, but was beaten by Ashley. "Second, infighting solves nothing. It only divides soldiers from doing what they ought to be doing. Jean wants to live in the interior, that's fine. That's his choice, not your's. Punching him the eye isn't going to convince him to stand up and join the Scouts. It's only going to make him want to join the Police even more, because he won't want to spend his time with people who hate him."

Ashley took a breath, "Lastly, and you all probably know this if you're going to go outside the walls, is that people are going to die out there. That's called war. It's not pretty. I think most of you saw my face. War does that to people, both on the outside and inside. Jean looks at the Survey Corps and sees the probably high mortality rate and thinks; "Nah. I want to live." There's nothing wrong with living, Eren. Believe me. But there's nothing wrong to fight for what you believe in as well. Keep that in mind. Jean might act like a dickhead, but make sure to think a little before you have a hissyfit, okay?"

Eren, somewhat ashamed and angry at himself for so easily losing his cool over Jean in front of the newcomer, nodded. He was also angry at Ashley, because to him, she was basically talking down to him as if he were a simpleton. He said, "Yeah, I'm sorry," but something about the tone in Eren's voice rubbed Ashley the wrong way. Almost like he had heard what she said, and it seemed to have only fueled his fury even more. This confused the Onyx Guard, as trying to get into Jean's head wouldn't be a bad thing for this guy. Perhaps Eren thought with his heart, not his brain. She ignored his tone and continued.

"I'm not the one who you should be apologizing to. You didn't hit me in the eye." The Onyx Guard shrugged. She turned to her fellow blond. "Armin, I'm heading to bed. We can talk in the morning."

"Alright, goodnight Ashley." The blond responded.

And then she was gone.

"Words of wisdom from a fellow soldier, right there." Reiner said, surprising the rest of the trainees inside. "She speaks the truth, Eren."

"Don't tell me you're taking her side! I don't care where she's from, she doesn't deserve to come in here and lecture us on what war is!" Eren argued back. Having her defend that horse-faced prick was one thing, but hearing Reiner admit that he found her to be truthful was a bit much for Yeager to handle. "I've seen titans myself! I saw what they can do! Has Ashley seen them? NO!" And then he turned to Armin. "And what did she mean she would talk to you in the morning?"

"I - well, I kinda wanted to ask her what life was like outside the walls." Armin rubbed the back of his head. "It's interesting, y'know? Having someone who wasn't raised here, someone new to this life. Ashley's probably the next best thing to understand what might lay outside the walls."

Eren still wasn't fazed, but this time it was Connie who spoke.

"Is she staying with us?" He asked, hopefully wishing that Ashley would stay. Even if their introduction had been her fist in his mouth, Connie found himself drawn towards the Onyx Guard for some reason. Maybe it was the tough love she seemed to have for everyone.

...

The female dorm, in comparison to the male, was dead quiet. Everyone had fallen asleep. Ashley entered as quietly as she could to not wake any of the slumbering cadets, and eyed the farthest single bed for herself. Seemed like Shadis had made some preparations for Ashley. There was a small end table next to it with a lit candle and a piece of paper with a feather ink pen next to it. Ashley stared at the pen for a couple seconds before taking off her helmet and placing it next to the candle.

Her weapons, the Mark II Lancer and the sawed-off shotgun, were placed near the end of the bed. Her armor, taken off, was shuffled underneath. Clad in nothing but her combat garnets, which was an undershirt and long underpants, she stretched her back and prepared for a good night's sleep.

"Hey."

Ashley turned around to see two of the trainees awake and staring at her. One of them was a tan, freckled girl who seemed to be more or less interested in Ashley's guns and another blonde with stoic eyes. She was tracing her vision across Ashley's curvy body, eyeing the scars that stretched across her chest and spine.

"Yes?" She responded.

"What are you doing here?"

"Going to sleep."

"So you're staying, then." Freckles said, raising an eyebrow. "By the way, my name's Ymir. Big nose dead-eyes is Annie." Ymir nodded her head to the other girl, Annie, who in turn glared at her. "Nice guns you got there. Killed anyone with them?"

"Ymir!" A new voice shouted out softly, it was the girl with the angelic looks. "You can't just ask someone that! It's rude!"

Instead of scolding the girls, Ashley let out a short, soft chuckle. "It's fine, girl. Yeah, you can say that I killed a couple people here and there." That wasn't stretching the truth, Ashley had killed humans along with locust in her time on Sera. Between crazies and stranded forces that grew too powerful for their own good, Ashley had killed plenty of people, and she resented herself for it. Valuable ammo wasted on a member of her own species.

While the little angel and Ymir talked and argued, awakening more of the female cadets, Ashley had already fallen asleep.

...

-the Underground-

The city was quiet, the torches of fire biting against the darkness that was always ready to take over the secret underground city. This is where Levi grew up, learning with the best from the waste of humanity, the scoundrels and the hunters that had taught him so much. The city itself was massive, rising up against the caves on the huge columns that held the surface above.

Suddenly, scurrying could be heard across the city. If one could see, if would seem that the city had been abandoned. There wasn't a soul in sight.

A lone man, coughing hysterically, tumbled out of a building where there could be screams and shrieks heard from the house behind him, glass shattering and furniture being turned over. The sounds of blood being splattered on a wall. The man hobbled away, clutching an injury that seemed to constantly bleed. His hat fell off into a crack in the street, which seemed to spread across the street and beyond. A sudden shot rang out, and the man clutched his leg in pain, only to realize that his leg was gone.

He still had one more, but his efforts to try and get away was stopped by a sudden boot on his back. The revving of an engine, and the man saw metal teeth in his vision, and then darkness as whatever had attacked him had sawed his head in half.

The locust drone laughed as he tossed the body away to an awaiting hungry bloodmount, which eagerly scarfed on the body. All over the city, this was a common sight. Blood had been spilled across the streets, painting the streets red with death. In the center, there was a huge collection of captured humans surrounded by locust soldiers. Most of them were children, no younger than twelve. They had seen their parents cut down in front of them or eaten alive by the monsters that had invaded their city when the giant sinkhole had opened on the eastern side of the city, swallowing the military base before these monsters invaded.

Some of the children noticed a massive flying creature, which looked like something out of a nightmare. Four humongous tentacles draped from the creatures body, where there was a legion of spindly little spider legs, and it was covered in gray armor. A maw full of teeth roared at the captured children, which sent some of them on their rears. The creature descended and something dropped out of it. It was coated in jet black armor, and held a strange weapon that resembled a bow and arrow.

"Report." It said to one of the locust, which was wearing a golden helmet and a gold arm band. It carried one of the rifles with teeth.

"We've rounded up the specific targets, Mortemus." The gold-wearing one spoke to the one in black, and it smiled. "Saturn will be very pleased that he'll be able to get more test subjects and increase our hold on this world. Though, he's going to be annoyed that you had to slaughter an entire town of the humans."

"He'll just have to deal with the blood on my hands, then." Mortemus said, and walked over to where the children were located and snatched one of them out of the crowd. A young girl, by the looks of it. Tears streamed from her brown eyes as she looked death in the face. Mortemus scoffed at the weakness she was showing.

"Please, let m-me go." She sobbed out.

"Tell me, little girl, do you fear death?" He asked, his sandpaper-like voice rasping against her ears.

"I... I... I do..." She said, whimpering out more tears.

"Then fear ME." And with that, he tossed the young girl towards the hydra's mouth, which crushed her in a single bite. The rest of the children screamed as the locust grabbed them and put them in the blue sarcophagi that would transport them to Antemurale. Their cries of horror were music to the Theron Elite's ears as he mounted his hydra and departed the now conquered Underground.

Soon, it would be time for the walls to be theirs as well.