Creation began on 06-01-15

Creation ended on 06-07-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Sky: Rise of the Rogue Titan

Grisha Yeager's notes and files were astonishing! He had discovered something called the Coordinate, which could empower a person with the ability to turn into a Titan with the power to control the other Titans, stop them and allow mankind to return from the brink of extinction…and he gave this power to Eren because the people that originally possessed it, the Reiss family, chose not to use this power to save the people and stop the Titans.

"I don't believe this," went Eren, setting down one of his father's journals. "The royal family had this power for years…and they did nothing but let the people suffer."

Mikasa and Armin consoled him; it wasn't just the revelation of this power Eren now possessed that could turn the tides and save mankind, but the darker revelation that in order to obtain this power, his father had turned him into a Titan…and had him consume his father because the Coordinate was linked to the possessor's spinal cord.

"How can this be possible?" One of the Survey Corps members questioned, unsure of this all being the truth. "The royal family could've stopped the Titans before any of this…and they chose not to do anything. They could've saved the people that suffered before the fall of Wall Maria five years ago, before the Colossal… Years ago! And they did nothing!"

"This is treason," went another member in response.

"But now Eren has the power to stop the Titans," said Armin, trying to clear the basement of bad air by reminding them all that they now had the opportunity to turn everything around. "And we can finally help Shinji take back the world from the Titans more effectively."

"A giant that can consume Titans is effective to a degree," added Mikasa, "but to be able to control the Titans and affect the memory of countless people is near the level of a god."

"This memory-manipulating aspect of the Coordinate power is, for some reason that even Mr. Yeager couldn't explain, ineffective against members of nobility and Asian races," a female member of the group told them, looking into another journal, and deducing that members of the Ackerman group had to be of Asian descent to be immune to the Coordinate's ability to erase memories. "Everyone else, for that matter, can have their memories erased completely in order to keep them in check and even be unable to find a way to stop the Titans permanently."

"And those incapable of forgetting anything relating to the Titans…are hunted down to ensure that they can't pose a threat to the royal family." Armin expressed.

-x-

"…These people were members of the Wall Cult," said a man, examining the remains of the dismembered people from last night, noticing that they had small knives and pouches of explosive powders, indicating that they were planning to attempt an assassination on someone.

Shinji, among the crowd of people looking at the dead bodies being gathered and examined, heard of this, and wondered what the Wall Cult was, exactly.

"Excuse me, miss," he asked an elderly woman on his right, "but do you know about the Wall Cult?"

"It's just a bunch of people that preach their beliefs on the Walls being sacred and how they believe they need to be protected from whatever impurities that may affect them, like the world beyond them," she answered him. "They're just a bunch of zealots that have lost their way and believe the world beyond the Walls is out of bounds and that the lands inside the Walls are all we have left."

"But that's terrible," Shinji expressed his concerns. "I mean…the Titans haven't been seen in a few months and preparations have been made to explore some of the ruins outside Wall Maria and retake them. How can expansion and colonization be viewed as a bad thing in the eyes of some cult?"

"Some people just don't believe in hope being beyond the Walls."

Hope, Shinji thought for a moment. That's something we really need during times of desperation.

-x-

With the word of several members of the Wall Cult found dead in the Shinganshina District, along with the possibility that they had been after the Eva's pilot, the Survey Corps had to make sure that he, as the only person capable of operating the purple giant, was kept safe from assassination, as he was part of their operation to take back the lands beyond the Walls.

Shinji had taken an extensive course on what the Wall Cult was all about and learned about a previous cult that was referred to as the Titan Cult, a bunch of people that were suicidal and worshiped the Titans over seventy years ago, and how they murdered an entire family to capture someone referred to as the Titan's Son, someone that survived being eaten by a Titan before they even took their first breath of life. As far as he could suspect, the Titan Cult was likely to be an offshoot of the Wall Cult taken to a different extreme.

"Hard to believe that some people are so afraid of the world beyond the Walls to the point where they're willing to hurt people to keep them within the Walls, isn't it?" Armin asked Shinji.

"Yeah," he agreed with him. "But we're giving hope back to the people and everything. How can they perceive hope as being wrong and that the Walls are the only thing that will keep them safe from what lies beyond them?"

"It's been decades, maybe even centuries now, after learning of some recently discovered details that were never included in our history, and we have to do whatever it is that we can to ensure that we take back the world and show the people that there is a future for them outside."

"That's what I'd like," Shinji sighed about his desire. "A future, one that I can embrace freely and without some sort of fear of the unknown."

"You kinda remind me of Eren right now," Armin told him. "He wants to see the world outside the Walls, too. And he wants to see the Titans stopped for good."

"Is he the one that can turn into a Titan and fought the other ones before I arrived?"

"Yeah, that's him. He even named the Titan he turns into, which I find…appropriate for the situation he was in at the time when Trost was invaded. The Rogue Titan."

"Rogue Titan? Rogue Titan… Yes, that would make sense, seeing as a rogue would behave or act differently from others that follow a pattern of behavior. I should know what he looks like as the Rogue Titan, just in case we're both dealing with Titans on the battlefield, even though I see that possibility as being unlikely, to avoid attacking an ally."

"Yeah, that's right, you've never seen Eren's Titan form. It's quite a formidable form for a fifteen-meter Titan that's different from what he looks like as himself. Eren's hair grows long enough to graze his shoulders, with his tongue and ears also becoming elongated. His Titan form's facial features sport a prominent, hooked nose, his eyes, which are green, are deeply sunken within the sockets of his skull, and his mouth takes on an unusual, jagged shape that's completely unsuited for any form of coherent speech, though he's capable of howling and roaring at people and things. There's no lips or flesh to make up his cheeks, so all of his teeth are always exposed. When compared to the majority of the other Titans we've encountered so far, Eren's Titan form is well-proportioned and, seemingly, more physically fit, as it sports a well-defined, lean, muscle appearance in lieu of the pot-bellied or emaciated-looking Titans we face."

"Like a person that likes to work out and build up their muscular appearance…but runs enough to be fast enough to evade or dodge assaults."

"Yeah."

"A balance between strength, speed and agility. The body is conditioned to be able to deal with taking punishment and giving punishment."

-x-

"…So, if Eren has this power to defeat the Titans now," went Levi to the group that had accompanied the Titan Shifter to the Yeager home, "and the royal family had this power for years, how do we go about defeating the Titans and retaking the world?"

"Since they could've stopped the Titans, but chose not to, not even explaining why, the Reiss royal family must be charged with treason against humanity," went Mikasa, stating the obviousness of the situation, "and once Eren masters this power, we can stop the Titans once and for all."

"My father's notes stated that this Coordinate power could be influenced by the memories of the Reiss family, but someone unaffiliated with them would be unaffected by their memories, allowing them to use the power without hindrance," said Eren, following what his father's notes stated. "They also said I would be able to use it when in the presence of the Titans."

"But that's if we encounter the Titans again," a male member of the Survey Corps expressed. "We haven't seen them within forty miles of Wall Maria. They're probably somewhere near or within the ruins of places yet to be retaken, hiding from us."

"It's not us that they're probably hiding from," a female member corrected him. "It's the purple giant that can devour them."

-x-

"Is everyone ready?" Shinji asked the Survey Corps, as they were preparing to travel to one of the ruins further from where they had already begun establishing the foundation of a new settlement.

"Yeah, we're secured, Shinji," went Armin, as he and the rest of the crew were tied to the platform.

Within Unit-01, Shinji picked up the platform and sprinted across the land towards the ruins.

"Oh!" One of the men gasped; most of them never got over the rushing feeling they experienced whenever the Eva carried them to their next location for expansion.

"I don't think we're ever going to get over this feeling," Armin sighed.

One of the only benefits of traveling by means of the Eva instead of their horses was the fact that it could move faster than anything they had. This form of travel, among the benefit of having an edge against the Titans and a humanoid able to power itself by feasting on the enemy themselves.

Shinji could see the sight of where they were heading, and came to a halt by a shoreline…showing the Survey Corps an impressive view of the vast ocean.

"Whoa," went Mikasa, never seeing the ocean before.

"It's amazing," added Armin.

Shinji agreed with Armin about the ocean being amazing, and it was the first time he saw an ocean that wasn't affected by an environmental disaster or the explosion of a creature of unknown origin experimented upon by people. If this world was as different from the world he came from, there was bound to no trace of any buildings or machines in the lower depths.

It was almost enough to make him forget about any possibility of ever returning to his world.

Almost.

-x-

With as large an army as it could amass, the Titan that looked nothing like the humanoid ones that were seen was preparing to seek out this giant that towered the largest of them ever made…and put an end to its existence before it put an end to their presence.

-x-

The Earth looked peaceful in the vastness of space between the sun and the moon. Until something bright red appeared on the surface of one of its landmasses.

-x-

"…That call was from the NERV branch in Nevada," Ritsuko informed Misato, later the very same day that said branch was running their experiment on Evangelion Unit-04 to install the S² Engine salvaged from the Fourth Angel. "Something happened that has raised much curiosity."

"What could've possibly happened over there that doesn't happen over here?" Misato asked her.

"They've opened a Dirac Sea."

"They what?!"

-x-

A giant hole in the ground of Nevada, the length of an aircraft carrier, filled with darkness, blocked off from the rest of the land to ensure the safety of civilians and whatever secrecy the NERV branch had left after Unit-04 was exposed.

The Eva itself was laying on the ground, several feet away from the hole, missing its right arm and leg, being ignored by the scientists in favor of the hole itself. With the loss of the S² Engine, the Eva had lost much of its value, as it was reconfigured to function with the engine, but would now have to be reconfigured again so that it would possess an internal system capable of working with an external power supply.

What had most of the NERV employees present on edge was what they saw for a moment appearing within the hole. It was only for less than a minute, but some were certain that they saw a giant, humanoid rising from the darkness, shrieking towards the sky, and then disappearing again.

"…It looked about fifteen-meters tall," a woman was describing the creature to a sketch artist, one of several that were present.

"…Its head had no skin on the mouth…"

"…It looked like it was strong enough to rip trees out of the ground…"

"…Like a giant, naked man, but with no genitals…"

Adding the descriptions altogether, the sketch artists deduced the creature to have been a fifteen-meter-tall giant of a humanoid (which would explain the witnesses' details of it being nude), and probably a mutation of some sort that NERV was responsible for.

-x-

"…This must've been a city before the Titans appeared," went Shinji, examining the tall structures further away on the coast. "This was a coastal city. A city by the water."

"Why would people build cities by the water?" Armin asked him.

"I don't know why, exactly, but some of them were, in my world, always well-known for being seen as tourist attractions."

"Tourist attractions?"

"That means that they brought people from other places to spend their time and money there, making it popular to visit, over and over again."

"Would they had lived off the resources of being near the water?"

"No, not if the cities were melting pots where people from other parts of the world pooled their owns resources to live off of."

"Melting pots? I never heard of such a term, but it seems right."

Rumble! The ground suddenly shook, and the Survey Corps became cautious.

"What was that?" One of the men asked.

"An earthquake, perhaps?" Another man suggested.

"No, that was not an earthquake. They're random and jagged. It was probably just a slight tremor caused by a change in the tectonic plates underground." Shinji explained; sometimes, the Survey Corps and those that lived behind the Walls and pursued careers in relative safety, were unaware of the extensive knowledge that Shinji possessed, and it, whenever it was necessary to share it, was another detail that made Shinji invaluable.

Rumble! The ground shook again, with more intensity, and this time they knew why.

"Titans," went Mikasa.

Shooting their cables upward, towards the tall buildings that stood since God-knows-when, the fighters got a better look at their approaching enemy.

"Oh, no," one of the female members gasped, as none of them were anticipating this new wave of fear. "They're like the Colossal."

From a distance, they didn't look like much, but the Survey Corps was certain that the Titans they saw approaching the ruins from the eastern side by the water were of the same height as the Colossal Titan, as they lacked skin on their bodies and were generating steam.

"Hey, you see that Titan in front of them?" Armin questioned, looking at the ground where the Titans marched. "That one's different from the rest."

The Titan he saw looked like it was heavily mutated, with fur covering every inch of its being, and it possessed long arms and an ape-like face. In addition, it must've been at least seventeen-meters tall.

"Shinji, you and Unit-01 take on the big ones," Levi ordered him, "and Eren takes that seventeen-meter one. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Shinji, inside Unit-01, responded, and took out the Progressive knife.

Eren, with his thoughts focused only on facing the seventeen-meter Titan, jumped from the building and bit into his thumb, causing a blast of intense heat and a flash of light, and in his place, slamming onto the ground, was the fifteen-meter Titan that had helped mankind retake the Trost District of Wall Rose, ready to take on the enemy.

The Rogue Titan had returned.

A/N: It was my birthday on the fifth of this month. I thought I could have this finished by then, but I was wrong. What do you think of Eren christening his Titan identity as the Rogue Titan and Shinji adding clarity to the reason and asking for a description of said Titan so as to avoid fighting and devouring an ally? Review, please. Peace out!