AJ the Guest: I'm curious, how did the previous chapter define the word "ironic"?

On a side note, sorry for the late upload. I don't know what age you guys are but college is a lot of fun outside of classes and I'm trying to get the entire experience. As always, this story will get finished like I promised. I think I have delivered quite decently on that, so far!

An Eldian's Journal

The Soul of War

Chapter 34: Basic Training Month 2 Day 1

Two weeks after the wall-keeper had brought me into his office, or about a month into training, I received a rude awakening in the form of water around 5 in the morning. I was sleeping, but when the water slapped my face, I opened my eyes to see Kurt and Viktor standing above me. There were stickers made of cheeky smiles on their faces, and water canteens sat empty in their hands.

They screamed in unison. "Happy Birthday, Heinrich!"

Shortly after the boys' rude welcoming, the rooster-like trumpets made their morning wake-up calls. The bunk mates murmured as they sniveled out of their cocoons, emerging from sleep. The soldier in the sky squeezed some sponges while washing his dishes and accidentally made rain for those of us down below at the bottom of the sink.

They were obviously excited about another day of dealing with Kaslow's shenanigans. Who wouldn't be excited to work with that man?

The annoyed murmurs were interrupted when a side-character of this journal crawled out from underneath my bed.

"It's a rat!"

"Kill it!"

The sight of the rat woke up the bunk mates from their half-awake half-sleep state and put them on full alert.

Through the chaos, a log-like creature with a scarred leg hobbled towards me. It was Milo. "Today is Heinrich's birthday, huh?" He shoved me off my bed, and picked up the mattress. "The birthday boy should have a softer bed to sleep on, shouldn't he?" He threw it over his shoulder like a victim, and plodded over to the barracks entrance.

He launched the mattress out the door and into an unsuspecting puddle of water nearby. The water was gloomy (the soldier in the sky must have been using some expired soap), and it oozed into the mattress like a bandage absorbing blood.

The rat squeaked furiously, but fortunately for us, it ended its crusade by squirming out the door. It sat on top of the mattress and looked back at us as if it had the last laugh.

The first five minutes of my 15th birthday are some that I will never forget. The birthday in general I will never forget, for I "celebrated" it in a hell away from hell.

After getting ourselves ready for the day, Kaslow gathered us from the barracks for an unnecessarily long session of marching. That day, the training camp was the bottom of a giant rusty sink. Bits of food crawled about in the form of cadets, and a large wad of phlegm led them in the form of a sergeant. The soldier in the sky left the faucet on and the cloud-like dishes sat above us rudely.

While we walked underneath the dishes, I couldn't help but wonder if I was going to get a gift. I knew for a fact that I wasn't going to get one, but I couldn't help but wonder. I carried this fantasy with me until I crashed into a cadet in front of me while marching. It turned out Kurt did too.

Of course, Kaslow noticed.

"Cadet Circus Monkey!" Kaslow turned around and shouted past the rows of cadets.

"Yes, sir-Sarge." Kurt replied.

"Can you not see what's in front of you?"

"I can see, sarge. I just got distracted."

"Is my behind not pretty enough for you to stay focused and look ahead?!"

"No, sarge, it's quite pretty."

"Say it confidently, cadet!"

"It's quite pretty."

"I said confidently, dammit!"

"You have quite a pretty behind, Sarge!"

Poor Kurt was the butt of everyone's ridicule in those months. I remember the days when he used to be the most rational and logical one in my gang. Too bad that wasn't all it took in a training camp. You needed to be physically sound as well in order to be respected and to succeed.

Kaslow shifted to me. "What's your excuse, Steiner?"

I didn't have any other option than to be honest. "Today is my birthday, sarge. I got distracted because of that."

"Today's your birthday?!" Kaslow raised his flabby arms in mock celebration. "Everyone! In honor of our lovely cadet's birthday, we are calling off training!"

A naive cadet asked. "Really, sarge?"

"NO!" Kaslow looked back at me with his beady eyes peeking through his eyelids. "Congratulations on making it one year closer to being dead, Steiner. Good job not dying for this long!" A laugh ensued similar to that of a maniacal clown's.

The wall-keeper rolled his eyes before turning back forward to continue marching. "What, Hausenbufferbooger? You didn't think that was funny?"

"It was hilarious, Sergeant."

After a tedious session of marching, came a less than satisfactory breakfast around 8 am. We occupied the dining room while problem-solving how to consume the food while avoiding constipation and vomiting. Something I had seen during the march bugged me. Well, a lot of things bugged me then, but this was somewhat high on the list.

Viktor sat down at my table and set a small plate in front of me. "I got a cake for the birthday boy." It was a moldy piece of bread. "Just imagine the mold as butter, and it will go down easier."

"I can't imagine mold as butter."

"They're both delicious. One is just poisonous. Just try it."

I set the bread aside and asked him, "Did you notice those other barracks earlier today while marching?"

"Yes, what about them?"

"They're empty."

"What's so wrong about that? Things can be empty all the time, like Milo's skull after he looks at his picture of Pieck."

"It's been almost a month into training, wouldn't they be filled with other troops?" I retorted.

"I don't know." Viktor watched as Kurt approached the table with his tray. "Kurt knows."

"Kurt knows what?" Kurt asked.

"You know? You always know." Viktor continued.

"I always know what?"

"You don't know? But you always know."

Kurt poured water into Viktor's oatmeal in retaliation. "Hey!" Viktor stared at the oatmeal as if a cardinal sin was just committed. "You're useless...I've always hated you, Eldian circus monkey."

Kurt began gnawing on a piece of bread. "Says the guy with the worst rifle skills in our barracks."

"We don't need to have good rifle skills to be good medics... Heinrich's skills are the second worst."

"Cadets!"

I dropped the sorry excuse for breakfast and looked around the dining room to find whose mouth that word came from. It was the wall-keeper. He stood like a pole by the entrance of the dining room and yelled. "Mail has arrived ... Some of you even have letters from home...come outside to collect it from me when you're done eating."

Me and the boys' returned to our meals and acted casually as if there was nothing pressing that we needed to check. Forks clanked and spoons tripped underneath food for a little while. It only took a few seconds for us to break our charade, and we flew out of our seats towards the dining room entrance.

We opened the door to find the wall-keeper standing like a tree, as typical. His leaves were ruffling in the wind in the form of waves in his uniform. Kurt asked first, but stumbled on his words thanks to the ominous presence. "S-Sir, do I have any mail?"

"No."

Then Viktor. "Do I have an-"

"No."

I asked. "Do I have any mail?"

"Yes."

The wall-keeper led me and the boys' to a large tent away from the dining hall. The boys gave me some looks of envy that even the rain couldn't wash off. The tent sat on the ground like a hollowed out cloud with men inside rummaging through an unlimited number of brown and white packages.

The wall-keeper went in and came out a few minutes later with two envelopes barred by his lumbering thumb and forefinger. I tried pulling them from his grasp, but he kept holding tight. Drops of rain peppered the envelopes as I looked up at him to catch his metal stare.

My mama too had a metal stare, but it was often a look of warm silver. The wall-keeper's contained some unrefined steel; it was blunt and cut.

He finally let go, and I saw some familiar names scribbled onto the parchment yellow.

Viktor said one thing. "Lucky Bastard."

I rushed back to the barracks with the intent of reading them as soon as possible, but the boys' gave me a warning. "Heinrich, breakfast ends in 20 minutes! You're going to be late for training if you take too long reading those." I brushed their voices off my shoulder. I ran past the puddles littering the ground and let the mud paint my boots. The privacy of the barracks was comforting since I knew no one would be in there during the day. When I arrived, I sat atop my mattress-less bed and my fingers trembled along the lining of the envelopes. The flaps wouldn't open.

I tore the entirety of the first envelope to get to the letter.

A paper with a few spots of evenness peaked out, and I saw some familiar squiggles.

Dear Heinrich,

I hope this letter arrived just in time for your birthday. Letters always take a long time to get places, so I wrote this just a few days after your papa left for his training. Let me be the first to wish you a happy birthday. I know your stinky papa will forget, so I know I am first.

Anyway, it's very peaceful around here now that you and your papa are gone. I can have full nights of sleep without one of you waking me up halfway and asking for some hot water. I also don't have to cook as much now that you fools are gone.

I will be honest. Lina has been acting weirder than usual lately. She drops by more than usual and gets so tired that she just ends up sleeping on the coach. On the nights she's here, I wake up randomly and smell a bunch of smoke, and then I realize it's just her.

I don't know how to deal with this girl. It's like having a stray cat that won't tell you anything but scratches the furniture anyway.

My problems are nothing compared to yours, I'm sure. I am holding onto the fact that you're going to be a field medic instead of a regular soldier. Hopefully, you'll be safer.

I have a tiny gift in this envelope. It's a tiny reminder of what you used to be.

Love,

Mama

I noticed a bulge in the envelope and stuck my fingers in it to find a wooden shard. Its patterns looked familiar, and smelled like Mama's cooking. It was a piece of my old, shattered guitar.

I preserved my emotions for the next letter.

Dear Baby Devil,

I'm writing this letter to you from a training field much like yours. I'll be honest with you. I don't remember what day your birthday is, but I know it's during this month, so hopefully this letter will get to you in time.

I'm sure your mama thinks I won't write a letter to you, but this will be evidence that I am a grown man.

Anyway, this training I'm doing is fascinating, I tell you. Every day, I learn how to dig trenches and it is SO interesting I can't even elaborate beyond that. I have to say, I miss that damn bar. I almost miss the days when the most pressing issue was the island devil thing where some people hated them and others didn't…

Weird how problems like that got so small after we left the internment zones, right?

Even some Marleyans gave up their "hating rituals" out here. Sure, there's some Marleyans that love shoving their superiority in others faces, but some guys just want to play cards with whomever they can find. I made a friend like that. He doesn't have an armband.

I wonder what your training is like. Do you know how to save anyone's life yet?

We are going to see some things soon, Heinrich. It's just a matter of time until I become the janitor of the battlefield, picking up bodies like they're empty bottles of wine.

I have a little gift for you in this envelope. You will be disgusted at first, but it will be the closest you will get to be near me right now.

Love,

Papa Devil

Rummaging through the envelope, I found some soil with a name of the station my pervy papa was in. I guess that was the closest I could get to him; I got to touch the soil he stepped on.

Tears lined my eyes, ready to pour out, but I simply looked out the window and realized there was enough moisture in the world for that day. It also seemed like mama cried while writing her letter, since there were many uneven dry spots on her letter. Also, the faucet the soldier in the sky used was still on, and I didn't need to contribute.

I gulped the hoarse feeling in my throat and put the letters in my bag of belongings next to Lina's tobacco and Mr. Kruger's journal. I had all the meaningful section F devils with me in one way or another.

Minus the cabbage man, of course. Who cares about that geezer anyway?

I ran back to the dining room to find that I had arrived just in time for Kaslow's arrival. "Let's get going, subordinate mutts!"

XXX

To be frank with you, those days passed by monotonously and there are not many noteworthy things to describe. I'm having some difficulty figuring out what I should tell you and what I should leave out. I believe that's the difficulty of writing a memoir. An individual's life is not designed to be compact and easily contained. Events don't always lead to a climax. Sometimes, there is no build up either.

That's what makes life intriguing.

It's also what makes my task of writing all the more difficult.

Bear with me as we keep crawling along with the events of those three to four months, for the events that follow shortly after don't have a build up. They just happened continuously without a break.

This is quite similar to Kaslow's impulsiveness. "Cadets! Today, we are going to learn how to shoot titans."

I was confused as to how we would practice this, but it made sense when looking around the place he had taken us. It was a plain with yellow grass, suffocating in the wet weather. Camels in the form of military vehicles grazed about the grass. On top of them were 13-meter poles standing with faces made of wooden planks.

Our first encounters with titans was in curtains of downpour, and fake titans at that.

"Cadet Steiner, since today's your birthday, you're going to be answering all my questions. Got it?"

"Yes, sarge!"

Shit.

"Good. Now tell me, how can you kill a titan with a rifle?"

"Guns don't work against titans, sarge!"

"Incorrect! You can kill them with special rounds from sniper rifles. Rounds that I like to call...black rounds. They're not standard military procedure, and you cadets sure as hell won't be using them anytime soon. Got it?"

We said in unison. "Yes, sarge!"

Kaslow yanked a rifle from the wall-keeper when he wasn't looking. "Instead of killing them, we have to do our best to distract them." He lifted his rifle and aimed it up at the wooden titan's face. "You have to go for the eyes. That will disorient them. Got it?"

"Yes, sarge!"

"Go grab a girl."

We went to grab our rifles but while doing so three more military vehicles showed up with their faux-titans standing on top nakedly without arms and legs. They were detestable stick-figures. After getting our guns, we returned to our formations. Kaslow then broke into groups of five without explaining at first.

I was in a group with three strangers and the bully Milo, of course.

"The five of you will stand back to back. As the vehicles approach you in a circle. Shoot the eyes of each titan, and I'll give the corresponding vehicle the signal to stop approaching. Steiner, your group is going first, and you know why."

"Yes...sarge."

Shit.

Milo gave me a death stare worse than the wooden titans as he stood behind me. The other bunk mates murmured and followed suit. We were a pile of vertical straws, and I was the shortest one.

The vehicles stood about 150 meters away from us, and they were placed like the five points of a pentagon. We were the center.

The titans began their walk in the curtains of water. Five beings of death accelerated.

At about 120 meters, my group members began to fire their shots. Bullet casings fell around me like the rain itself. I began firing my shots at around 100 meters.

The wood of the titan didn't acknowledge my bullet. It kept approaching, and I pulled the bolt of the rifle to make another shot. I missed once again.

100 meters became 80 meters, and some other group members' titans stopped their approaches. They must have hit their targets. Only my titan approached, and I reloaded the rifle frantically and made shots. They all flew into oblivion.

The 13-meter pole kept on its path and the vehicle underneath attempted to break, but it skidded towards me. It was almost like the mud wanted the vehicle to crash into me. I attempted to run away, but the group members stayed still, and I was locked in.

Finally, the vehicle gently bumped into me and I fell into the moist, beige dirt. I suffocated the grass even more than it already was. The heat of the engine and the immense stature of the pole taunted me like a bully. I was defeated.

Kaslow, the oppressor, walked over and crouched by me. He said in my ear, "If that was a titan, you would be eaten alive by now...everyone was able to shoot the faces except you." He stated the obvious; that's typical of Kaslow. "This is why we don't have 15-year-old soldiers."

Once again, I was defeated at something I never asked to be a part of in the first place. What honor was I getting? No one even wanted me to be there.

(Did I ever encounter anything resembling a titan again?)

(I'll answer it for you,

Yes. Yes I did with ⅕ of the numbers and 100% of the reality.)

The ground slobbered me with its soil, but it almost didn't hurt. I had grown used to the ground and all its complexities. It was just like a human, hiding something underneath with an innocent but superficial layer. I stood up and brushed off some strands of grass from my uniform. I knew soil had decorated my face for I could feel it licking my skin.

The bunk mates gathered around again and another group of five left to form a circle. The vehicles went back to where they were.

"Steiner!"

"Yes, sarge?"

"Get back to the training camp. You're running laps for the rest of the day." I said bye to Kurt and Viktor, who were as anxious as I was before completing the activity. When I turned my back to the bunk mates, Kaslow stated one more thing. "And make sure to show off that pretty face of yours to the new recruits over there."

New recruits?

I picked up my pace to head back to the training camp, which was a mile away. But I couldn't help but wonder who the new recruits could be. I assumed they were the ones to occupy the barracks that were empty when I went marching in the morning. I was looking forward to more people ridiculing me, of course.

When I had reached the gate with the Marleyan flag hanging limply above, I caught a glimpse of a pregnant army vehicle approaching far off from the distance. It must have been pregnant with indigestible guns and very digestible humans. I was too winded to care, so I began my laps.

The fence walked around me with each swing of my arms and step of my legs. I grew competent at running. The faucet in the sky had begun to dwindle thankfully, which meant the soldier in the sky finally

got some sense knocked into him. I managed to see his blinding face peeking through the plates he left in the sink. He shot me with a bullet of sunlight as a 'hello'. "Hello, soldier in the sky," I said back.

The rumble of the pregnant vehicle approached. It was like a cow, slowly approaching and not doing more work than it needed to.

I kept up with my laps, keeping to myself and doing my best to ignore whoever was on that bus. I ran two, then three, then seven, and then ten. Sweat was mingling with the dirt on my face; it was like hot chocolate with an attitude. My heart must have been chased by an angry woman, for it was thumping around my body playing hide-and-seek behind different organs.

My curiosity got the best of me and I watched the cadets walk in an organized manner and get stamps with their Eldian IDs. It was like a contained swarm.

The issue was they were half sized.

Humans barely four and half feet tall marched with bags on their backs. Barely developed faces floated above miniature uniforms, and some of these cadets had hair tied in buns. Girls as cadets? I recognized immediately who they all were-warriors training to get one of the nine.

Memories of a warrior I had known for a short while warmed my mind with a faint buzz of nostalgia. I thought for a second that the soldier in the sky had shot a few bullets of light, but it was something more powerful. A nugget of gold floated about in the swarm of tad-pole cadets.

It was the golden boy, Falco.

Sore legs took a respite from their pain and returned to full function. I ran through the camp, past the shoebox barracks and triangle tents. I could see the small face getting closer and closer, but he hadn't noticed me yet. Full-grown soldiers noticed me approaching the line and got in my way.

"Move!" I demanded.

"You're gonna mess up the line," a soldier with sideburns said.

"I know one of them!"

"Yea? Well, I know Sergeant Kaslow, but you don't see me running after him every time I see the guy."

I went on my tiptoes to see if Falco recognized me, but I just saw the back of his head amongst other small people. Shortly after, I saw a cadet about my height and probably my age. He had a long jawline and a dutiful but gentle look. It was slightly familiar to me. He looked familiar but not really at the same time.

Hmm.

Falco did say he had a brother.