Annie couldn't believe it.
Well, to be honest she really could, but she'd somewhat already accepted Eren's supposed death, and now here he was, standing in front of her, in titan form.
And holy shit was she glad that she had gotten to see Eren's titan beforehand, although it probably would have been fairly obvious regardless.
His titan was currently still rampaging around the area, slaughtering every titan it came across with a brutality that only Eren Jaeger would have and in some ways it was cathartic.
She knew it was him, it had to be him, because she'd never seen another titan look the way he did, had never seen a titan that held so much emotion, so much rage at well, anything really.
But of course she wasn't the only one to notice this behavior.
"Annie! Annie!" Connie screamed from just a bit ahead of her, still pointing towards Eren's titan (Although he certainly didn't know that it was Eren), "Holy fuck, did you see that titan?"
"Yeah, I...its been killing other titans right?"
"Has it? I just saw it go ham on the one in front of Mikasa, but has it really been killing other titans?"
"Oh, that's um, just what I heard from some others." Annie responded, suddenly realizing something. She knew what Eren's titan looked like, she knew that was Eren and he certainly wasn't dead. She knew that there was no way that titan would purposefully kill humans, but nobody else did.
They all thought that it was some random abnormal who suddenly appeared and was just killing titans. They thought that it could turn on them at some point, and probably would want to get rid of him as soon as he became less useful.
Of course, this wasn't the case and while Annie was grateful that her mission was no longer in such dire jeopardy (and that Eren was alive, although she'd certainly never admit it) in some ways this had made attempting to smuggle Eren out much harder.
The Survey Corps weren't supposed to return until later today, so that put her on a time limit to get things done and get them done quickly but there was one thing that concerned her. One big thing having to do with Eren.
She could still hear him roaring off in the distance, that same cry of rage, and while his movements seemed practiced and calculated to anybody else, she could see the sloppiness in each punch thrown. It was as if he was simply throwing himself at the titans without any thought as to how they would react.
And she'd seen this before.
Not necessarily with fights against mindless titans, but it was one of the things that they drilled into her head during training, her original training.
Eren wasn't in control. He was letting the power of the titans control him, strip him down to the most basic fighting instincts that he could still use effectively then use his body to achieve whatever goal he'd had when he shifted, and predictably it looked as if he had shifted out of rage.
Revenge was the easiest goal to give yourself when you needed to shift, as it would always be there and was a pretty concrete goal, but was also the most dangerous.
It was so easy to just lose yourself, drown in your emotions and power as you realized that this ability allowed you to do what you truly wanted, to get that revenge with nothing but a small cut and a bit of time, but it was never worth it.
They'd drilled that into all of the other shifters' heads as well. That attempting to shift in a rage will cause nothing but destruction and failure because in something as big and powerful as a titan they needed to be able to control themselves.
She'd gotten lucky earlier with Eren shifting, all the way back in the forest, then. He'd simply had a goal that allowed him to stay in control, but this time? This time she was just going to have to wait until he began to cool off and weaken.
She couldn't fight off a horde of mindless titans, humans attacking her, and Eren's titan at the same time, so attempting to grab and go at the moment was out of the question.
She looked back at Bertholdt, who she had honestly forgotten about a bit, and saw him going over similar possibilities in his head, absentmindedly counting things on his fingers.
Once he noticed her staring at him, she gave a slight nod and curl of her fingers, a silent order of 'follow me' as she turned back around to where a good chunk of the group was still sitting, shocked.
"Bertholdt and I are going to head around there to see if we can find any other teams and tell them about the situation here." She called out to no one in particular. "Wouldn't want them killing such a powerhouse too early on."
"You sure?" Connie asked, eyeing her gas reserves. "You might want to head to fill up first."
"We've each got about a third of our gas left and it's important that we tell the others quickly, so we'll head over, spread the word, and then head back."
"If you're sure."
"Yeah I am." Annie responded, a faint smirk threatening to pull at the corner of her lips. "Be sure to save some of the gas for me."
And with that, the two were off, heading in the direction of Eren's rampage.
Of course, they had no intentions of meeting up with any other people who happened to be around Eren, as no person in their right mind would attempt to attack him through this mess of mindless titans, and even if they did, they were far more likely to get killed than to actually get to him, but they did need a relatively obscure place to figure out what the fuck they were going to do now.
"So what's the plan?" Bertholdt asked as soon as they were out of hearing range of everybody else. "Are we just going to try to grab him now?"
"No, not at all." Annie responded, shaking her head. "You still can't shift for a little while longer and while I could fight my way through a bunch of mindless titans and people, I'm not so sure about all of that and then having to fight Eren as well."
"He's not in control?"
"It doesn't look like he is at all."
"But I thought you said he was in control in the forest, what's the difference here?"
Annie bit her lip. She really didn't know for sure, but she had a bit of a theory. "I think he had a different goal here."
Bertholdt simply gave her a bit of a confused face before she continued with, "In the forest I think he only shifted because he wanted an answer to a question, versus here probably shifted because he either didn't want to die, or wanted to kill titans." She glanced over at Eren, covered in evaporating blood and heading back into the fray for more. "And with how it looks I'd place money on the latter."
He took a deep breath. "So we have a rampaging, possibly all powerful titan on our hands and we have to smuggle him out of here somehow. And it'll be awhile before I can shift again." That last part was added in as an afterthought, but he was almost certain Annie knew by now.
"And we're on a time limit."
"Fuck."
So things were looking pretty bleak, although Annie had to admit, the current situation was certainly better than what they thought they'd be facing before.
"What about Reiner?" Bertholdt suddenly asked after the two sat in contemplation for a moment. "You said earlier that you couldn't um, well really had no way to fight off so many parties at once, but if we added reiner into the mix, he could be your shield of sorts."
"We certainly could, but…" She trailed off. Reiner's behavior earlier didn't make her all that confident in involving him as a big part of the plan, especially considering that if it went south while she was shifted she had a very real possibility of being injured.
Or killed.
Plus two more hostile intelligent titans wouldn't help Eren's case if they did fail and he was caught. They'd simply lump him in with her group and execute them.
Assuming that they didn't want to them torture for information first.
Bertholdt gave her a glance, noticing that she'd trailed off. "Was he acting weird with you earlier as well?"
"Yeah." she responded, and that was the end of that. Neither of the two wanted to talk about it because the implications of Reiner's actions were...concerning to say the least, and if they couldn't trust him with parts of their mission, what could they trust him with?
"I'm sure it'll be um, totally fine!" Bertholdt said, half attempting to lighten the mood and half attempting to convince himself. "All we need to do is tell him about the plan and we'll be fine. Everything will be fine."
And for once, Annie decided to believe him.
Back at the supply tower, Armin was having a bit of a mental breakdown so he decided to form some plans, as one does.
While the vast majority of the people within the tower were useless, (let's be real here, a good chunk of them had assumed that they would never have to face a titan head on and as such weren't exactly prepared for this situation), there were a few who he could possibly round up in order to make a raid on the storage area below, as from what he'd heard there were really only seven or eight small titans down there.
Seven or eight.
He could deal with that. He could deal with it and it'd be fine.
The main issue, as always, was the lack of gas.
He'd already rounded up a small group of people who could be possible candidates for an attack on the storage room, but it wasn't as if all of them had gas to spare, and no matter how much he tried, no matter how much he pleaded, nobody was willing to give up a any of what they had.
And then he got worse news.
As he explained his plan to the group one person indignantly cried, "We-we can't maneuver in there, even if we did have gas!"
What?
According to part of the supply team, as credible as they were, the supply area really was tiny, and with that many small titans in there maneuvering would be a death sentence.
Personally Armin thought they were cowards, but he did suppose they had somewhat of a point.
He'd either need some people who were better with gear or a different plan.
Which was when he was jerked out of his thoughts by a large crash from across the room, as well as the telltale sound of shattering glass.
Was it the titans?
So far none of them had attempted to break through any of the glass, simply milling around outside and waiting for any poor souls who happened to stray too close, but Armin knew that they wouldn't be waiting forever.
He had hoped he would have a little longer than this to think up a plan though.
As he moved towards the back of the building, as far away from any windows as possible he was knocked over by someone barreling into him, knocking him to his feet.
Who the fuck-
Oh.
It was Connie.
"Armin, man, you have no idea how happy I am to see you right now." Connie exclaimed breathlessly, pushing himself up off the floor and pulling Armin with him, and while Armin would have normally chided him on not looking where he lands, this time was an exception he supposed.
"Same...same to you Connie." Armin exhaled sharply. Damn did that hit hurt. "Have you seen Mikasa since...well, since you found me?"
"Oh yeah, she's actually with us."
Armin jolted up at that.
Mikasa was here? Holy shit that made everything so much easier.
But also more difficult.
He'd been mulling over how to tell her about the events that had led him to hole up in the supply depot, but so far had been fully successful in working himself up into a frenzy. Truth be told, he had no idea how she'd take the news, whether she'd be able to recover from the shock or not.
Walls knows he still hasn't recovered.
"Does she know?" Armin asked tentatively. "About, um the reason why I'm-"
"She knows about Eren." Connie responded blandly, the small bit of excitement that he normally seemed to hold slipping away from him for a moment.
"O-oh. Well, um, who else is with you?"
"Jean, Annie, Bertholdt-well actually Annie and Bertholdt went off to warn the others not to attack that one titan, but they'll probably be back in a couple minutes."
"Is there an abnormal or something that we need to know about?" Armin asked, confused. If there was something that dangerous out there it wouldn't even be worth it to tell others not to attack it, meaning that Annie and Bertholdt were simply on a fools errand. One that would lead to their deaths.
"Oh the fuckers abnormal alright." Called out Jean as he moved towards Connie and Armin. As he walked over Armin could see Mikasa still brushing herself off but making her way over to the group nonetheless. "It's ignoring us and killing any other titan it can get its hands on out there."
Armin's eyes widened. So the rumors were true? There was a titan attacking other titans out there? But...but nobody had ever heard of anything like that before! Even on the Survey Corps' endless missions out into the unknown they'd never seen any proof of titan on titan combat, not even over humans.
So why now? Why now at Trost and not at Shiganshina? Why now and not during any expeditions?
Sensing Armin's disbelief, Mikasa piped up, "I was on the ground, about to be eaten when it appeared out of nowhere and decked the titan above me."
"So it...it really exists then," Armin muttered, more to himself than anyone around him, "a titan that is here to help humanity."
"I don't know if I'd say it wants to help humanity-" Jean started but was cut off by Armin rather enthusiastically saying, "We should lead it here!"
"What?" Cried out quite a few members of the small group he'd accumulated.
"Ok, ok, I know it sounds weird, but what if we led it here and just let it go on a rampage outside of the tower?" Armin reasoned "We could let it clear out a path of titans and allow us to escape. Or at least not be in imminent danger."
Armin knew that this plan was risky, but fuck, everything that they did here was risky, what's one more danger to add.
Jean was the first one to speak his thoughts, saying what a good chunk of the group had been thinking, "What makes you think it won't turn on us the second it's killed its share of titans? What if it's simply trying to get rid of competition?"
Armin frowned. To be honest he didn't. A titan like this was completely new to him, new to everybody around him, and it certainly wasn't normal. They couldn't depend on it to act passively once all of its current enemies were destroyed.
"I don't know what it wants, but would you rather just sit here and wait for all of the titans outside right now to kill us, or just try and give it a chance?" He pointed out, crossing his arms. "Besides we have some issues to take care of before we can even think about heading out again."
"Issues?" Mikasa asked, poking her head through the crowd.
"Right now there's no way to get gas." Armin explained. "Apparently a couple of smaller titans snuck in and are just crowding around the gas supplies."
Jean covered his face as he looked at the ground. "No way…"
"Do any of you guys have gas left?" Armin pleaded looking around the group only to be left with averted eyes and mutterings of "Not enough." But as he continued to look around he noticed something. There were far more people here than there had been before, and all of them were much more reliable.
The titans were small, but all around the same height and even with minimal gas, if he spread it out among multiple people then…
Armin looked up just in time to see Annie and Bertholdt make their appearance and realized that yes, this really could work.
Armin's plan almost sounded like suicide with extra steps, but Annie had to give it to him. What he'd thought up was ingenious, but even more impressive as she realized that this could actually work.
It'd require their full cooperation and a lot of balls, but it wasn't like they had anything else to lose so why not try, and while Annie was certainly interested in seeing how this whole event would play out, she was more interested in getting her plan relayed to Reiner.
Bertholdt's anxiousness must have started rubbing off on her because she could feel her hands getting clammy as she strode over to where Reiner was sitting, preparing for his role as an attacker up in the rafters (Something that she feared much more than she'd let on) and quickly led him away from the majority of the group.
To a place where they wouldn't be heard.
"Reiner, Bertholdt and I have come up with a new plan for our mission, but we're going to need your help with it." She whispered quickly in no more than a whisper. If people found out exactly what they were trying to do right now they were fucked.
"Huh?" Reiner responded, confused. "No offense, but Armin's plan seemed pretty solid. Not sure how me playing a different role is going to change much."
Fuck, this is partially what she'd been afraid of. "No you idiot, our mission!"
"Isn't our mission to free up the supply depot right now?"
"No it's-" Annie let out a deep calming breath before she got too loud. What the hell was going on with Reiner today? "To retrieve Eren we need your help, you got that?"
"Eren's dead." Responded Reiner bluntly, and wow what a great way to sugarcoat it.
Although Annie was fairly certain that nobody could hear them, she still decided against plainly stating who exactly that intelligent titan was outside of the clocktower and said, "You've seen that titan killing other titans right? Long ears, no lips, and lightning bolt teeth right?"
"Yeah I-"
"Does it remind you of anything? Of anybody?!"
"I-" Reiner's face scrunched up in confusion and that was when Annie really realized that she had a problem on her hands. "No?"
Fuck.
Reiner wasn't acting, nor was he just being an idiot, as she'd literally just spelled out exactly who that titan was, and fuck he'd seen Eren's titan before! There was something wrong, whether it be with his memory or mental state and Annie didn't know which one she preferred. Either way she certainly didn't trust Reiner with being a big part of their mission at the moment, and really didn't know if he could ever be again.
She was hoping that the oddness she'd first encountered was simply shock, a blast of trauma and dissociation that had led to him momentarily acting odd around her and Bertholdt, but by now she was more than a bit worried that this simply wasn't the case.
That this would be much more of an issue than she had originally bargained for.
Noticing her scowling Reiner asked, "Is everything ok? I've got no clue what you're talking about, but we've got to get to our stations soon. Armin's depending on us."
"Yeah." Annie responded, because to be honest she had no idea what else to do. "Let's head back."
Holy shit.
Holy shit!
Armin's plan had actually worked! It had worked and they were able to clear out the basement area and Annie thought that her heart would never beat at a normal pace again because fuck that was more scarier than she had thought it'd be, fuck.
She placed a hand over her chest to steady her breathing as half of the people around her had a mental breakdown while the other half cheered so loud she feared that they'd attract more titans.
Which was a very real possibility, so they had to work fast.
By popular demand Mikasa had been given the first pair of gas canisters and was tasked with surveying the area outside and keeping any of the remaining small titans from getting in, a task which Annie did not envy, but was a little bit annoyed with.
Who had designed this so smaller titans could fit in here anyway?
As she mulled about the area, absentmindedly checking in on people she wasn't supposed to care about, a small voice in the back of her head told her to quit stalling. That she needed to tell Bertholdt that Reiner wouldn't be in any sense reliable and that they were going to have to think of something else, but…
She couldn't.
Just thinking about the issue made her sick to her stomach because she really didn't have any other plan, which meant that this whole endeavor was just getting more and more likely to just be another failure on her long list of failures.
Except this one was much deadlier.
Yet it wasn't as if she could avoid Bertholdt forever, and despite her valiant efforts she could already see that he was approaching her.
"Have you told Riener about the plan?" He asked, voice barely above a whisper. With all the chatter and excitement around about finally, finally not having to worry about running out of gas, it wasn't likely that they would be heard regardless of how loud they spoke, but it was always better safe than sorry.
"He doesn't know what we're talking about." She spat.
"What?"
"He acted like I was crazy for saying we need to retrieve Eren. Said he didn't recognize his titan at all."
Bertholdt began to wring his hands nervously. What the hell was happening? "Are you sure it's just because he didn't see Eren's titan? I mean, I know that its pretty distinct, and uh, kinda easy to describe but-"
"He didn't even fucking recognize that he had a mission to fufill." Annie said a bit louder than she should have. The pair could see Connie turn his head to look at the two before they waved him off. Placing her hands on her forehead Annie continued with, "I don't know what's happening, but I don't think that we'll be able to rely on him right now."
She could see Bertholdt mull over their remaining options, which were getting more and more scarce as time passed. Neither of them had any idea of how long it'd been other than a substantial amount of time, and the Survey Corps were due back by dark.
If they wanted to make a move, they'd have to do so soon, but now with the majority of the cadets having gas…
Fuck! Why had she helped them out? Why had she given into Armin's pleading and grandiose plans as he referred to them as a cohesive unit? Why had she considered herself a part of that unit?
Once she knew that Mikasa was out of gas and the majority of the elite squad was dead she should have shifted, consequences be damned, grab the people she needed and ran. It wasn't as if anyone could catch her or attack her without any gas.
But she hadn't been thinking about that at the time.
She'd been thinking about how Reiner was abandoning his mission, abandoning them in favor of the other cadets. She was putting her emotions first and any scrap of logical reasoning she had had suddenly decided to disappear from her brain.
God, Reiner wasn't the only one acting odd today.
"So what do you want to do now?" Bertholdt asked, crossing his arms over his chest. It was obvious he was frustrated and whether it be from her actions, Reiner's or just this whole goddamn situation she'd never know. "Sit and wait until Eren tires himself out and simply hope that the Survey Corps don't show up early?"
"That's really all we can do for now, unless you've got a better plan." Annie retorted watching in a sort of smug satisfaction as his frustrations seemed to pop like a wet balloon under the realization. They really didn't have anything else they could do at the moment.
Well, that wasn't totally right Annie supposed. Eren already had eyes on him, just waiting for the moment to attack or for his titan to be dealt a deadly blow, and while they didn't know that large body held a human within, Annie and Bertholdt did.
They'd have to shift their focus from retrieving Eren to keeping him a secret, which was a lot harder than it sounded without any other context.
"There is one thing we can do." Annie started. "If we stay by Eren, we could wait for the moment he emerges or cut him out ourselves and keep his identity a secret."
"So it'll just look like it was a random titan rather than a shifter?"
"Exactly."
She could practically see the gears turning in Bertholdt's brain as he thought about the concept. On one hand, he had been expecting to be able to grab Eren and leave today, and wasn't the most thrilled about the change of plans, but on the other hand…
It was really all they had.
He held good faith in Annie's skills, but there would simply be too many enemies for her to fight reliably, and that could get all four of them killed.
At the end of the day it was safer to just hover and try to keep Eren a secret, hell they could probably even manipulate him into coming with them willingly by telling him what would happen now that everybody knew there was a bloodthirsty titan that could be controlled by what was essentially a kid.
In the end he agreed with her, as he always ended up doing. "Ok then. Let's find that titan."
They didn't exactly have to go far in order to find what they were looking for, as once they rose out of the basement they were met with a shocked crowd of people-what the hell, weren't they supposed to be clearing the area?-and a roar that almost had her clapping her hands over her ears.
Ah. That would be why they hadn't left.
It seems that their favorite shifter had come to them, which certainly saved some gas.
Which Annie couldn't see much (Something she refused to believe had anything to do with her height) Bertholdt could see the scene just fine and relayed the situation to her.
It was a slaughter, which was to be expected.
What was not to be expected was the damage that Eren's titan had taken.
Despite being comparatively more intelligent, his titan had little to no chance while it was being swarmed, already having lost an arm and a good chunk of flesh over it's ribcage. Bertholdt seemed to be just in time to watch him lose his other arm, a surefire mark of a losing shifter.
He wanted to move forward, he really did, but regardless of how tall he was or how high the ceiling was, it simply wasn't safe for him to fire any of his wires around such a crowd. He needed the crowd to clear, a distraction to happen, something, anything-
And his answer came in the form of Armin screaming, "What the hell are you guys doing! We need to protect it!"
Although neither Bertholdt nor Annie would normally peg the small blond as intimidating, they had to admit that he could certainly be a bit terrifying when he wanted to.
Within the mad scramble of legs the two managed to launch themselves out of the tower, landing on an area just above where Eren's titan seemed to be falling, finally losing balance as it's back crashed into the tower, slumping over, nape up.
Holy shit, this was their chance. Their chance to grab him and make it out of here and nobody would think twice about it except…
Except Armin had his eyes on the titan as well.
"I think it's dead! We should head out into the field!" Bertholdt called out to him, attempting to lure him away from where Eren could emerge at any moment. Although he probably wouldn't. There was far too much steam escaping from his still open wounds.
Eren was healing, and he was healing fast.
Despite being a bit of a distance away Armin shook his head and called out, "I don't think so! It looks like it's healing!"
Fuck Armin and his stupid fucking smarts.
Pretty sick of yelling, Bertholdt decided to move closer to where Armin was perched, Annie taking the place he had been prior as he asked, "Shouldn't we be getting away from it then? In case it decides that it actually does want to eat us?"
Armin gave him a nervous look as he bit his lip. "Ok, I know this is going to sound crazy but I kind of have a plan." He pointed down to the still healing titan, "You remember that big piece of rubble that was left in the town square in case a similar situation to Shiganshina happened?"
Bertholdt nodded. The plan had been to use a specialized squad to place it in front of the gate once they saw the armored or colossal approaching, but due to the very nature of their appearance, Bertholdt knew that this plan was wishful thinking at best.
Plus he was pretty sure the team that was supposed to move the rock was dead, so what the hell did Armin plan to do with it?
"Well I was thinking, that titan seems to want to help us right? And it seems at least a little bit intelligent so…" he trailed off continuing to stare down at the titan. "I thought that maybe it could understand us, at least a little bit. And maybe we could lead it to the boulder and get him to lift it in place of the special operations team."
Bertholdt was more than a bit shocked. Mostly because if he hadn't known exactly what lie within that titan he would have written off what Armin said as the ramblings of a crazy planner, but his idea did have some merit.
If Eren hadn't been on a rampage, if Eren could have understood them at all, there would be a very real possibility that Armin's plan could have worked, but as it stood it looked like he was simply grasping at straws.
Bertholdt knew that it was because of the pressure that he was currently facing, the pressure to make everything better, to create a plan that would fix what they needed just like he had done within the supply depot and couldn't help but feel a bit bad for him.
"Armin...I uh, don't think that's going to work." Bertholdt responded softly, watching as Armin's face fell. It was obvious that he was looking for some sort of support in this, someone to tell him that his plan wasn't crazy, that he could fix this, but Bertholdt wasn't going to be the one to do it.
He probably should have told Mikasa first.
"I mean, we don't know until we try right?" Armin pleaded. "If we can just get him to that boulder we might be able to make him understand, make him understand how important it is to plug up the wall!"
"Armin…" Bertholdt started, honestly feeling a little bad for the boy. He'd lost so much in one day and now there were hundreds of people relying on him to think up something else to get them out of this mess but he didn't get to continue that thought because something shifted beneath them.
They both watched as the titan pushed himself up, having already regained its arms and slowly moved forward.
Bertholdt gave a quick glance to Annie who nodded back at him, the indirect conversation clear. They needed to follow that titan.
Eren was on the move.
Everything was hot.
Actually, he took that back. Everything was hot and sticky, feeling like a thick syrupy jelly had enveloped him, wrapping around his arms and legs like the world's warmest and most disgusting blanket, but he couldn't really bring himself to hate it.
The warmth was relaxing, pulling him in and out of consciousness and it continued to try and lull him back to sleep.
Yet he kept trying to resist.
He could hear something, someone above him talking, but his fuzzy brain couldn't actually make out any of the words that were being said. He just kept getting small bits of dialogue in an oddly familiar voice.
"-ce o-at…. tow- re in ca-tion…-hina happ-"
Ugh.
The voice was at the front of his mind, as if it were a person that he'd heard a lot from, but for the life of him he couldn't place it. It didn't help that he was only getting little bits of the voice and the second he tried to hold a thought it felt as if it would simply slip and fall out of his mind.
Walls, what had he been doing?
Actions and images swirled around his head without any real meaning, a burst of steam near his face, small explosions behind him, and an image of a torn up roof all flashed through his head rapidly, but none of them really made any sense.
It was as if he was watching a slideshow of somebody else's life, it was like riding a horse and having no clue where it was going.
Where was he anyway?
He remembered that he had been trying to do...well something. Somebody had been calling out for him, reaching to him, but why couldn't he remember?
The voice above him grew larger and more clear, and finally he could tell it was...Armin? And someone else but he couldn't quite place just yet.
Why was Armin above him? What was he saying? Fuck where was he?
And why couldn't he remember what had just happened? There was a titan, and screaming, and pain, more pain than he had ever felt before-
Eren felt as if someone had dunked him in cold water despite his heated surroundings.
He had been eaten.
He'd been devoured by one of the beasts that he'd for so long vowed to kill without even taking down a single one of them, he'd been devoured as a failure.
Was that why it was so warm in here?
Though that didn't feel right. Something was telling Eren that he was safe, protected even wherever he was. He didn't feel the sticky sense of fear, the finality he'd felt as he'd slid down the titan's throat, which meant something was different, something had changed while he was asleep.
His eyes snapped open to the view ahead of him, the ground far too high up and far too blurry for him to have simply been up in the air suspended by nothing but his 3DMG, which really only left one option.
He had shifted.
At some point between the time that he had been swallowed and now, he had shifted and he couldn't fucking figure out when.
Had anybody else seen? Were they discussing how to get rid of him as they spoke? Were they just waiting for him to exit the shell of the monster that was currently protecting him and strike the moment he exited?
Walls, what if he'd hurt somebody?
Thoughts and scenarios ran wild through his head as he tried to think back to something, anything, that would tell him what he'd done, how he'd ended up here, slumped against a building taller than himself at the moment and listening to Armin talk to Bertholdt-was it Bertholdt? It sounded like it but he'd never really paid much attention to what he'd sounded like-discuss something.
"I thought that maybe it could understand us, at least a little bit. And maybe we could lead it to the boulder and get him to lift it in place of the special operations team."
Armin's voice rang clear through his head as he realized that yes, they were in fact talking about him, but not in the way that he assumed.
Armin had a plan. Armin had a plan for him, something that only he could do.
Something that could save part of humanity.
He remembered that boulder, oh he remembered it well. It had been one of the things he'd relentlessly made fun of a while back, thinking that the colossal would simply be killed before it had any chance at causing more damage to the walls, after all they were much more prepared this time right?
But he'd been wrong. He'd been so wrong and now they were in this fucking mess, and Sina, how many people had died while he'd been out?
(How many had been by his own hand?)
As much as Eren didn't think through his actions, he knew he wasn't stupid. Even if he had focused exclusively on killing titans in this form-the best case scenario-what were the chances that not a single person got caught under his foot? What were the chances that not a single person was crushed by his hands as he attempted to achieve his goal of killing all the titans?
Fuck, why couldn't he remember?
He could still hear Armin and Bertholdt above him, bickering about the plausibility of him listening to commands and actually being able to carry the boulder, which was when the first important realization came to his mind.
Neither Bertholdt nor Armin were making any indication that they knew who he was, or even that his titan was controlled by a human. While Armin questioned whether his intelligence was high enough to understand commands, Bertholdt continued to shoot him down.
And if Armin didn't know…
It was very likely that nobody else knew who he was either.
He could still escape, get out of his titan quickly and make up some bullshit about cutting himself out of the titan's stomach except-
Armin had seen his leg.
And there was no way that it hadn't regenerated while he'd been within the titan.
So he was really going to be discovered no matter what huh.
The least he could do is one final action for humanity, one last thing that would allow for him to give back to everything that he had known.
One last thing to protect his friends.
He was going to seal up that wall.
Once the titan started moving Armin had a bit of a suspicion as to where it was heading, but had written it off as wishful thinking at first.
After all, even if the titan truly was able to understand human speech, Bertholdt and he were much too far away and were speaking far too quietly to be heard properly. There was no way. There was just no way.
Yet the beast moved as if it were on a mission, suddenly ignoring titans that it would have previously gone out of it's way to attack and instead moved right towards a certain spot, right towards that boulder.
But there was no way that it was actually doing what Armin had suggested. It couldn't be.
Regardless, he told everybody he'd met on the way there, every single person who stopped to listen, and probably about twenty others who didn't, that there was one thing they had to do.
They had to protect that titan.
He knew it sounded crazy, fuck, he sounded crazy to himself, but there was something in his gut that told him that he could trust this thing. That it wouldn't let him down.
That it wanted the best for him.
And walls he hoped he was right.
Bertholdt and Annie had been following him as he flew around, talking about something among themselves, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
This was happening. This was really happening!
As the titan approached the town square, the boulder became visible, and woah.
That thing was a lot bigger than Armin remembered.
Yet he still continued to bark orders, telling people to get into formation, to clear the area, to do anything that would give this titan a flying chance at actually succeeding in sealing up the wall, and walls where was Mikasa.
She would know what to do. How to take out the most titans, and how to keep them away from this titan, but she was nowhere to be seen at the moment, and holy shit the titan was lifting the boulder.
Armin felt like he was gonna cry.
Scratch that, he could feel tears begin to pool in his eyes and blur his vision as the boulder moved, shifted beneath the titans massive hands as it was lifted off the ground and onto the beasts back, and he knew that he, no humanity finally had a chance.
They just couldn't screw this up.
That rock was heavy.
By the Walls, it was so fucking heavy.
Eren felt as if every muscle in his body was splitting open, just barely supporting the fragile ribcage that kept him upright, hell considering a titan's healing ability they really may be splitting open as he walked.
But he couldn't stop.
Every time he even so much as thought about stopping he'd hear Armin's voice behind him, yelling to the tens of people surrounding him to protect him, to attack the surrounding titans at all cost, because this was all that they had left.
Because this was humanity's hope.
And Eren had to give it to him, Armin really was good at on the fly motivational speeches.
But it wasn't just that. It was the screams of the dying as they threw themselves at titans in a desperate bid to keep them away from him, it was the fear of failure, of simply not being able to plug up the wall because what would happen then?
If he stopped now, there was no way that he'd be able to get back up, he'd just be a mass of limp flesh lying against a boulder until further notice, and there was absolutely no way that everyone would be able to protect him while he took another quick nap within his titan form.
If he stopped now, there'd be nothing stopping more and more titans from pouring in through the gaping hole in the wall. There'd be nothing stopping the mindless slaughter of the few friends he had left, the few people who had survived up until now.
If he stopped now there'd be nothing but a single wall between the titans and Wall Rose, and he'd already seen how that panned out.
That didn't make any of this any easier though.
His whole body felt like it was being crushed, pushed beneath the massive weight that he supported using his head and neck, and fuck if he had been human at the moment he would have been worried about how long that crick in his neck would last.
But he wasn't.
At the moment he was a titan, he was the last possible thing that humanity could rely on, the last hope.
He'd most certainly be killed after this.
And fuck, didn't that thought hurt?
He was here, ready to lay down his life for people, and because of what he was, because of something he didn't have any control over, they would be ready to end him at any moment.
Although he guessed it couldn't be helped.
As Eren continued to walk he kept repeating that phrase in his head. That he'd be fine with his death as long as humanity got to live on, as long as his friends were fine.
That he'd accepted the situation.
Besides, maybe they wouldn't kill him right away. Maybe they'd give him a chance.
Yet as he rounded the corner he could hear more shouting, more commands from people who weren't on the ground attacking titans but rather moving weapons around.
Cannons to be exact.
He knew the orders, fuck he knew every single one of them, and just like that his fragile dream that they'd see his usefulness, that they'd let him live to see another day, that he'd get to speak to Armin and Mikasa one last time was shattered.
He'd never get to argue with Jean again, he'd never get to see Annie's small smile when he finally did something right again, he'd never get to apologize to Armin and Mikasa for being such an asshole for the past couple months.
He'd never get to see the ocean.
And that was the moment Eren realized that no, he wasn't satisfied with this.
He wasn't going to go out as some kind of sacrifice for humanity because he could do so much more, fuck he had to do so much more, be so much more.
He was given this ability for a reason, whatever it be, and he wasn't satisfied with simply throwing away his second chance at life for a single action to help humanity.
He was there to make a change, to protect, and fuck, he was gonna do it regardless of the consequences.
The titan looked as if it were being crushed beneath the rock, it's sturdy body creating heavy dents in the ground wherever it stepped due to the extra weight it was carrying, but Armin held nothing but hope for the being.
It was getting closer and closer to the gate where it'd be able to place the rock back down, and he could only hope that that was the titan's true intentions, but what else could it be?
It seemed to similar to be a coincidence, I mean what were the chances of him saying the plan to Bertholdt just above the titan, and then having that titan decide to complete those exact actions on its own?
Which left one option, an option he both feared and hoped for.
This titan was intelligent, and furthermore could understand human speech to at least some extent. He already assumed that it was intelligent based on the accounts of other recruits, but this was something totally different.
A benevolent titan that could understand human speech was more than a game changer, and could be a victory sentence if they treated it properly, but that was the issue there.
Armin wasn't stupid, he knew that no matter what this titan did it'd be treated the same as the rest of its kin once it stopped being useful to humans, once the perceived threat managed to outweigh the benefits, regardless of how numerous they could be.
It was already happening anyway.
"Don't shoot!" He screamed at the numerous soldiers who were continuing to set up cannons around the area, still drawing titans away from the titan they were aiming at. They certainly weren't willing to give up the small shot that they had at sealing the gate, but it was clear everything was chaos.
Nobody had ever seen a titan like this before and people were scared, that much was obvious, but what wasn't helping were the numerous orders that were flying around.
And with no consensus on who to listen to, people simply followed what they knew. This titan was a possible threat, and they had been trained to take out threats.
Yet as that titan approached closer and closer Armin could see the fear and uncertainty continue to build on the soldiers faces as the thunderous footsteps approached closer and closer.
"Get in position!" Somebody yelled, and while Armin had no clue if it was a squad leader or not it probably didn't matter to anybody else. They were desperate for guidance and were looking for whoever could give it.
"Stop!" Armin cried back in retaliation. "That titan hasn't hurt anyone! It's helping us!" but it looked as if his efforts were futile. A couple of heads turned towards him, torn between the reality that they were seeing and their previous knowledge but nobody moved out of position.
He was going to have to try much harder to get these people to see his point and fast. After all, the titan was still rapidly approaching.
"Shouldn't we try to keep it alive for now? It's killed more titans in a single hour than most soldiers could hope to in their entire life." He reasoned, placing his arms in front of him in a placating gesture. He didn't need these people to be scared of him, he just needed them to listen.
"Its a fucking titan!" came a panic stricken cry from somewhere in the crowd, and just like that the little bit of progress Armin had made was rapidly disappearing, dispersed throughout the crowd and into thin air as those footsteps got closer and closer.
"But this one is obviously different! Shouldn't we at least try to capture it for study? Maybe we could find more!"
"And what, just let it kill us when it gets the chance?"
"We don't have any proof that that is what it wants to do!"
"We don't have any reason to think that it won't!"
Fuck, fuck, this was bad. It was fairly obvious by this point that regardless of what he said they would come back with something that, while not a sound argument, just served to strengthen the idea that they needed to attack and quickly, and besides, the titan was almost to the wall.
But he wasn't about to give up just yet.
"As soldiers we swore to our lives for the resurrection of humanity, to the protection of the last of us who live within these walls! At this very moment we have a weapon who has completed these goals better than we could ever hope to within a lifetime and we are here questioning whether to let it live or not?! So it may turn out to be dangerous in the end, but isn't that all the more reason to let it live for now? For all we know there could be more of the same out there, only much less benevolent than this one here, so why not use it as a chance to learn more? To give ourselves a leg up? Fellow soldiers this is our chance to gain a victory for humanity, so I beg of you please, let it live!"
As Armin scanned through the crowd he gasped for breath. Was it enough to save the titan for the time being? Was it enough to at least distract them for the time being so some of the more rational minds within the crowd to take over and continue giving orders?
While the crowd stood shocked, Armin saw one soldier towards the front whip his head away from where he was standing, towards the titans, and in that moment Armin knew he had failed.
"It's at the gate! Get ready to fire!"
"No, listen to me!" Armin screamed. "We can't-we can't do this!"
But it was far too late. The cannons were in position and the titan was right in front of the gate ready to seal it.
Except that wasn't what happened.
He watched, slack jawed as the titan kicked its right foot through the ground, dragging the appendage through dirt and stone, and spun itself around so that it was facing the cannons
The beast seemed to freeze for a moment, and time seemed to slow down as Armin questioned whether he'd been wrong. Maybe this titan wasn't benevolent. Maybe it was carrying the boulder for its own purposes.
Maybe everyone else was right, it really did want to end humanity just like all of its other kin, and Armin was the one being played for a fool here.
He could hear the screaming of his fellow soldiers as they quickly abandoned their positions in favor of some other place, anywhere that wasn't the boulder's predicted path of travel, but Armin was frozen. He simply sat, staring up at the beast as it held the object that could either end or save his life above it's massive bulk.
And for a second it almost seemed as if it was staring back at him.
Yet as soon as Armin noticed, the titan was moving again, yet not forwards as he had previously been doing.
In one swift motion, it stepped backwards, through the gate as it threw the rock down behind it, sealing off Trost from any remaining titans, as well as itself.
And then Armin didn't know what to think.