Chapter 1 Part 1 - A New War
The fall of shiganshina was many things. For some it was the end of everything, for others a new Beginning. It was a fulfillment of duty, a justification for revenge, a reawakening to fragility of life; But for one, it was a return to what he'd always known. War.
The child looked in horror as the second wall was destroyed and standing before him was a 15m tall entity of destruction. Was he and his friends next? First his home, then his mother, and now him. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists drawing blood. He prepared to scream out in anger and despair, but something caught his eye instead. A bright light in the sky started to grow larger and larger, closer and closer. It took the attention of everyone on the boat. There was something in the center but it was impossible to make out. The boy snapped back to focus and turned back to the behemoth, but even it's face was fixed on the ball of fire. The projectile started to curve as it got closer until it looked to be angled right at them. No one could look away until finally, impact. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the boat started to shake violently as several people were knocked to the floor. Those who remained standing watched as shards of rock and metal hit the ground and splashed into the water. Finally a blast of wind took out those who remained on their feet with enough force to knock out a few who were unprepared. The boy struggled back to his feet, he looked first in the direction of the crash, a large cloud of dust obscured the view. He then looked back toward his tormentor who seemed to have vanished. The boat's occupants were safe for now.
The titan fell to its knees at the edge of the crater left by the crash. It had taken off without even thinking, leaving its comrades behind, and drained its remaining energy. Steam started to erupt from its body; With no strength left it crumpled to the ground, its limbs rapidly decomposing. Its neck opened up and out of it emerged a young boy. The boy stood to his feet and just stared at the wreckage that lay before him. After a few minutes a new titan approached from behind, this one had a female appearance and on its shoulder stood another boy. The female lowered the boy to the ground next to its friend before collapsing as well.
"Reiner, what are you doing? Shouldn't we be heading for the wall?"
"I'm sorry Bertholdt, but something about this needed to be investigated," the first boy replied.
"So you're sorry?" The girl who emerged from the second titan joined in, "You said we needed to complete the mission. We were supposed to take turns running to the wall and now because of your detour, we're both out of energy."
"Relax Annie, It should be at least a couple hours before any titans make it out here. We'll be able to transform again by the time that happens, for now let's look around a bit." The trio began to descend toward their objective as within the ship things began to reawaken.
The damaged terminal struggled to blink back to life, machinery whirred before dying again, lights turned on with a repeating flicker. A hologram projected up, a glowing blue girl with glyphs flowing across her body, a bit visually distorted but otherwise fully functional.
"Damn machinery." She swiped her hand to pull up a glitched maintenance console. "Remaining hule integrity 15%, 15 out of 23 power cells cracked, 60% of systems damaged beyond repair, 30% require critical repairs, 10% operational. 19 of 20 cryotubes were destroyed. You really do have a way with luck, huh." The hologram blinks away and reappears in a new room. "You've napped long enough Chief, time to do your stretches." She pushed a button on her console causing the pod in front of her to wake up. The frost on its glass melted away revealing an armoured man inside. A couple minutes went by and the pod opened; The man stood up and stepped out onto the ship's floor.
"Cortana, I take it things were quiet while I was asleep."
"Quieter than I'd hoped. The computers weren't very good company."
"Then let's get back to work." Chief walked up the podium and pulled the chip from it's slot, returning it to his helmet's port. A cold sensation rushed over him as if he'd been splashed with freezing water. It was a sensation he'd almost missed. He grabbed his rifle and magnum from the rack and left the room. "How long has it been?"
"A little under 5 years, I had almost given up hope that anything interesting would happen."
"And the reason for the wake up call."
"A couple hours ago I noticed we had drifted near an unknown planet, I would have woken you then, but when we hit the atmosphere the entire ship was hit with an EMP which locked me in my chip, only after we landed was I able to reboot the system.
"Any idea where in the galaxy we are?"
"Completely unknown. If there's anything here to help us, it would have been drawn in by the crash." Chief stops in his tracks as he hears voices down the hall. Three dots soon show up on his radar.
"Woah, what is all this stuff, it's more advanced than anything we've seen back home."
"Careful Bertholdt, we don't know what we might find."
"Can we hurry this up, something about this gives me a bad feeling." Chief stacked up behind a wall and watched as the dots inched closer. The voices grew louder and soon they were right on top of him. In an instant Chief jumped out with his rifle drawn and quickly dropped his aim.
"Children?" The stunned kids jumped into motion as they stripped their jackets and tossed at chief as a distraction for them to run. " Hey, wait!" Chief called out, not dazed by the distraction, and began his pursuit.
"What is a titan doing here?!"
"How should I know?! This thing fell from the sky!"
"Would you two just shut up and run!" The boy in the back shrieked. Chief caught him in a blink which caused the other two to stop."
"Help me!"
"Hey! Let him go!" The other boy ran to throw a punch at chief, but he recoiled in pain upon impact with the hard titanium armour.
"Would you relax? I'm not going to hurt you. I just need to ask you some questions." The adrenaline rush the kids experienced began to fade and their reason returned.
"You can speak?" The pinned boy asked.
"I can." With their senses returned, the children more clearly observed what stood before them.
"You're not a titan?" The boy with the bruised hand spoke up next.
"No, I'm human like you. What's a titan?" Chief released the boy he had pinned and he rejoined his friends. They looked at each other puzzled about what to do next.
