Creation began on 08-04-18

Creation ended on 08-05-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Sky: The Pact of the Akuma Titan

A/N: A glimpse into Grausam Zanki's past after he abandoned Paradis for Marley.

Running, never stopping until he had reached the end of land that existed beyond the Walls, as fast as his legs could take him. That was how Grausam was able to get away, even as some of the Titans chased after him. They couldn't take him, even as they ran as fast as their deformed limbs could carry them. He was stronger…and had his eyes set on the ultimate prize at the end of the dark tunnel that was the journey out of this Hell. And it was a prize he wanted.

Hours had passed…and day became night. Away from the evaporating remains of his first Titan body, standing on the leg he had taken back from past, looking up to the bright heavens beyond his mortal reach, Grausam had tasted the greatest thing he'd ever received before and ever would again: Freedom beyond the Walls. He had the nerve to shed tears at the thought that ran through his conscious.

My father always told me how funny fate can be sometimes, he thought as he walked down the unknown path, but if this how fate is for me, if there's even such a thing as fate, then she's nothing more than a fickle, old whore.

He had made it to a series of tall buildings unlike anything he'd ever seen before, and found what had to be a small boat like the ones he had heard about in old stories.

"I'm out of here," he told himself.

-x-

Life at sea wasn't a life for anyone that was like Grausam, as he'd been at sea for two weeks and had consumed all of his rations until he had left was an orange. And then…fate once more showed how fickle the whore could be.

"Hey!" A voice called out to me in the larger boat that was a short distance away from him. "You there, in the boat! Are you an Eldian?"

"A what?" Grausam asked back. "Am I what?"

The larger boat came closer and the people aboard it tossed over a rope to him, and he climbed up until he reached the deck. There, they grabbed Grausam and slammed him against the wall.

"Are you an Eldian?" One of the men asked him, pointing a gun at his face.

"What the Hell is an Eldian…or whatever it is you're asking?" He questioned back.

"Eldian, from the island of Paradis, that place with those walls," another man explained.

"I escaped that place the moment I saw an opportunity to do so. I grasped freedom from the Titans…and abandoned everyone to save myself."

"You're going to wish those Titans ate you," the gun-toting man told him.

"Wait, please," Grausam begged, desperate. "What do you want? I don't know any of you and I've done you no wrong."

"You're an Eldian," the third man uttered. "You're one of the Devil's children, one of Ymir Fritz's bastard mistakes. Every breath you take is another second of mercy you don't deserve."

"I don't know what the Hell any of you are talking about, but surely, someone of my skills can be of use to you in some way."

"What could you possibly offer us that wouldn't be a waste of our time?" The man pointing the gun asked him.

"I was obsessed with the Titans for one reason only, and it was to regain my lost leg and get off that forsaken island. I used my own family to achieve that goal before I could escape. I turned my step-granddaughter into a Titan to see if my research would bear fruit, and when I saw what I needed to see, I gave myself the power. You want the power, too? I'll give it to you. Anyone that wants it can have it."

The three men looked at him like he was crazy, that he was completely nuts.

"You turned yourself into a Titan?" The one on his left asked. "That's not possible. We've turned dozens of Eldians into Titans, and they were all mindless, drawn to their own just to devour them."

"I didn't devour anyone. I injected myself and then I transformed and ran out of that town I lived in before anyone could notice. I ran across the land until my Titan body gave it up, grateful that I still had my leg that was restored to me. I don't know if I could do it again, but if you spare me, I'll show you what I did."

"How do we know you're not some liar trying to save his own ass?" The guy on his right asked.

"Knowledge is power, and I'll offer mine if it means freedom. I'll do whatever I have to in order to stay free. Dissect corpses, bleed out test subjects. I'll even turn others into Titans if I have to."

It was a rare sight to behold, an Eldian that was willing to do anything to live, even if it meant betraying his own people. And there was something about his choice of words, something…that just made the three want to believe in him.

"We'll let you live for now," the gun holder expressed. "We'll take you back to Marley with us. You'll show us what you can do to prove your worth. And if it pans out that you're capable of what you say you're capable of doing…then maybe, just maybe…your future will look up."

Grausam nodded. For now, if he played his cards right, kept his tone and temper in check, showed them his invaluable mind, then he'd be an invaluable person to them.

-x-

So, this is Marley, Grausam thought, seeing the large continent that was a change from the island he learned was called Paradis, a prison for the Eldians these people had taken to dispose of for their crimes.

Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out a small vial he had with him that was all he had left of his original Titan Serum that he used on Kaede before he used it on himself; this was to serve as his bargaining chip to the Marleyans in exchange for the greater rewards of his freedom.

"This way," the three Marleyans that brought him here ordered him, and he followed them to wherever he had to go.

"Impressive, isn't it?" One of them asked him as they escorted him to a building further up inland, to their superior, a Marleyan general by the name of Calvi.

"It is," he answered him.

As far as he could see, Marley was many times more advanced than those walled settlements Grausam once resided in, seeing these large things made of metal moving across the ground and in the air. The first chance he got, he wanted to understand all that he could.

-x-

"You brought an Eldian here?" Calvi, a rather disgusted man, demanded on the three men that brought Grausam to show him.

"He claims he has something that will make him useful to our cause," one of them expressed.

"Unless he knows something about the Coordinate, he's useless to us," Calvi told him.

Grausam then held out his vial of Titan Serum to Calvi.

"What is this supposed to be?" He asked him. "You may speak."

"A Titan Serum I developed to escape from Paradis," he answered him. "I used it to become a Titan…and if you want it, it's yours."

"You don't look like you turned into a Titan. They're mindless behemoths."

"Take me to an empty space, and I will show that it works, that I can do what I say I can."

"And if you're lying, we'll kill you without blinking, Eldian."

They took Grausam to a large patch of land just outside of the urban areas of Marley, just where an old war was won recently with an enemy nation beyond their controlled land, and he was given a syringe to inject himself with his own serum.

Show them your power, Grausam, he thought, injecting himself with his serum, and show them your value!

With his intentions set, he smashed the syringe against his face, feeling the glass bits cut his skin.

FLASH-BOOM! He felt immersed in hot water, placed upon a log or a mattress or something of the sort, with some form of rubber stuck to his face.

Looking around himself, he felt taller and stronger than ever before. He looked down at his hands…and saw dark flesh, bulging muscles underneath and a world that had to accept that he was here. A great distance away from him, he saw the Marleyan soldiers, and did his move: He bowed his head to them…and waved his arms around, just as he said he would.

"Can you stand on one leg?" Calvi's voice shouted over a megaphone.

Grausam did as requested and stood on his left leg.

"Incredible," one of the commanders expressed. "He just injected himself…and he understands everything he's told."

"He can't be one of the nine," another commander uttered. "We need to know all that we can about this man."

"Maybe we will," said Calvi as the Titan Grausam turned into began to evaporate.

Grausam emerged from the nape of the Titan and exhaled a stream of smoke. Something felt different this time after he injected himself with his serum. He felt stronger, more heightened or something of the sort. It was like there was nothing he couldn't do.

-x-

"…You transformed, yet you still retained your intelligence," Calvi said to Grausam an hour later. "If you can make other Eldians do that, you might actually have a good future here in Marley if you serve our cause to take the Founding Titan from the Eldians of Paradis."

"How good a future are we talking about here?" Grausam asked him.

"Eldians that serve Marley with every fiber of their being end up living without being confined to the internment zones. Instead, they get recognized as Marleyans…with the same freedoms and liberties that Marleyans enjoy. Think about it. You wouldn't be viewed as an abomination. You'd be one of us."

Acceptance from people he didn't know until his time at sea. There was no other way to define the choice laid out before him. If Grausam turned on his own people, and he was willing to do if it meant his own survival, then he'd be accepted by those that wanted something of value from the people that had it.

"Jaeger," he uttered.

"Huh?"

"That's what I call the serum I made to turn myself into a Titan Shifter. The Jaeger Serum, from an old word I once read that was 'Jaeger', meaning 'hunter'. I've become a hunter…and I'll hunt for freedom and acceptance in any way I can. My services…are at your disposal, sir."

"Welcome to Marley."

-x-

And with his decision to side with Marley, Grausam Zanki, whose name became synonymous with words like "cruelty", "merciless", "twisted" and "devilish". And as the months passed since his induction into the Titan Biology Research Society where he was able to use their resources to recreate and expand on his Jaeger Serum, he was able to learn many things in his spare time, including the Warrior Unit that was tasked with the Paradis Island Operation that the military was so stressed over because they wanted this Titan that was said to be a nexus that connected all Eldians known as Subjects of Ymir together, enabling the Titans to be so strong. But he could care less about his people and this Founding Titan; something about his own Titan form's abilities left Grausam feeling…completely detached from all other Titans and people. It was as though he had severed whatever link he had with these…unseen paths…and left only the one that connected him to something else entirely.

"Akuma," he uttered one day, catching the attention of none other than the boy wonder named Zeke Yeager.

"Akuma?" Zeke asked him as he was refining more of his serum to increase a Titan's height. "What does that mean?"

"That's the name of the Titan that escaped Paradis when the opportunity to do so appeared. The Akuma Titan, independent of these Nine Titans you people seem to rely on as your crutch to maintain the power you have. The day it returns, I pray it'll be the day what's left of Eldia falls. I look forward to that day."

Zeke, who was impressive and invaluable to the research division due to his ability to create and control Titans through his spinal fluid, wondered how this man, this…Eldian turncoat that got in the military's good graces with his own variations of the Titan Serum that confirmed the Titans produced by him retained their intelligence and could transform at will, exactly as those with one of the Nine Titans could, which made him see the guy as a threat more than an ally.

Any Eldian that can transform and retain their intelligence is a dangerous individual, Zeke thought as he wondered how long it would be until Marley could no longer rely on a turncoat they gave asylum and citizenship to as a reward for his more-efficient serum variations, and I fear that this Grausam Zanki may be the end of us Eldians if he continues to provide his Jaeger Serum for Marley.

Unfortunately, since a Titan produced by the Jaeger Serum was more manageable than those produced by the old serum or the Beast Titan, Zeke was seen in a less-favorable light than the others in the Warrior Unit. And this made the turncoat invaluable.

"What does 'Akuma' mean?" He asked Grausam.

"Honestly, I don't know what it means," Grausam responded, "but I know it means something infamous. Whatever it is, I hope it goes down in history as one of the Titans that brought what's left of Eldia to its knees."

"What drove you to betray your own people?"

Grausam sighed and expressed, "They're not my people any more than they're your people."

Zeke got the impression from that response that he wasn't going to get a straight answer from this man that got the one-up on him…and that he didn't trust other Eldians as far as he would tolerate them as it allowed him to improve upon his own research. One thing was for certain: Zeke wouldn't trust Grausam, even if he was ordered to by their superiors. He was the Warchief of the Warrior Unit and the Beast Titan! This man was just a treacherous stray! There was only room for one of them that held the most promise!

What the Warchief didn't know, however, was that Grausam did know what "Akuma" meant for his Titan form, and chose to keep the name to himself because he felt all the more empowered by being the only one to know the truth to its meaning. The Akuma Titan, a Titan…invoking the very Devil himself…to become like the Devil and possess greater power than what was already possessed by the man that could become such a Titan.

To be continued…

A/N: And now we have the background of the man that would become one of the greatest enemies of Eldia…and Kaede Sogen's most hated relative that she would rather see dead than incarcerated for life.