"No plan survives its first draft, that was something we learnt well…it's a bloody good thing we can adapt…or we'd never had made it"-Edith M. Brown Diary, 850
Spring 850,
Retake Wall Rose Operation, Trost City District
"…We've managed to corral most of the Titans into the corner furtherest from the breach. Combat has been avoided as much as possible, but still 20% of the forces are lost" the lieutenant informed the Commander as they walked the length of Rose.
"Not lost. They did not die of losing their way. They were sent to their deaths by me. This is the threshold of our extinction, soldiers and if my actions ensure mankind survival, history may call me 'Butcher' all at once"
Mikasa dodged the punch headed her way, rebounding off of the building's exterior and landing on the bridge of Eren's nose. "STAND DOWN, ACKERMAN! THAT'S AN ORDER!" called her commanding officer as Mikasa wrapped her hand around Eren's fringe ready to hang on for dear life if she had to.
"EREN! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE SOMEWHERE! I KNOW YOU RECOGNISE ME! COME ON! SNAP THE HELL OUT OF IT! WE'VE GOT A BREACH TO SEAL UP! EREN! LISTEN TO ME, YOU'RE HUMAN!" Mikasa yelled over Eren's heavy breathing, ignoring her commanding officer as she did so.
"GET OUT OF THERE!" the captain called as Eren's fist sailed towards his own face. Mikasa quickly pushed off of his nose and landed on a nearby roof as Eren knocked himself out. This was not going well.
"Red smoke, that's not good" muttered a Garrison soldier as the group atop the walls looked out over the city of Trost, "Sir at best, I'm afraid it means the elite squad hit quite a snag"
"This is pointless! My friends died like animals!" a cadet wept in the back.
"No! Look! Over there!" someone called pointing towards the tower of Titan steam rising into the sky.
"It's over! They failed…" trailed Marco.
"But how…?" breathed Armin in disbelief, before placing the extra canisters on the ground and dashing off the Wall and into the fray.
"Wait! Armin, where are you going?!" Marco called.
"Commander, I recommend we return to defending the gate. Just say the word, sir" stated a Garrison captain.
"Denied" Pixis replied.
"Sir, shall I order a full scale retreat?" The lieutenant asked.
"Absolutely not. Continue luring the enemy to the edge of town. The elite squad is well within their rights to make their own decisions. Proceed as planned, this was an all or nothing proposition. I will allow those at the vanguard to determine if and when we deviate. We are not in a position to deliver a verdict of defeat. But we are in a position to fight to the last breath. It's humanity's debt, it's what we owe the fallen"
Through it all, Edith watched on with a heavy heart and memories of Maria washing over her.
"…Ian! Snap out of it! What are you waiting for? Give the order! Hey, its not like this is your fault, c'me on! Look, the plan was doomed from the start! We all get that! Was it worth a shot? Sure, whatever. We did the best with what we had and all we've got now is going back over the Wall!" cried the soldier.
Furious, Mikasa prepared to scare the man into continuing the mission only to be stopped by Captain Ian who physically forced her to stop. "Stop! Easy, now is not the time. Team Rico, take out the twelve metre approaching from behind. Team Metabi and I will handle the frontrunners" Ian stated.
"Are you nuts?!" Rico demanded.
"In case you've forgotten, I'M THE ONE IN CHARGE! Do as your ordered soldier! We are not leaving Jeager defenceless. Period. Change of plans, our jobs is to keep the others off him until he can be recovered. Whether we like it or not, he's still our last best chance. We're not about to abandon him, we're expendable, he isn't; he can't just be replaced"
"Please! Don't talk to me about our last best chance! He's a failure countless soldiers have died because of! Just look at him Ian! Are you saying you want more of us to die saving that?"
"That's right! Every single person, down to the last man! If that's what it takes, so be it!"
"What the hell is up with the red smoke? What happened?" Jean asked coming over to where Marco, Edith and Connie stood waiting. The crowd atop the wall had dispersed, their sombre attitude felt like a thick blanket suffocating the few who still remained.
"Uh, I don't know. But, uh, Armin's gone to check" replied Marco, "But I think it's gonna be all right"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, of course. I mean this is Eren we're talking about. He's not one to give up"
"…Right"
"I don't wanna be that guy, but this whole thing seems kinda pointless" Connie muttered.
"Hell, when's the last time a fight against the Titans didn't feel like it was pointless? The best thing now? Do what we can to prevent losing anymore" said Jean.
"Yeah, you're probably right. I just hope this isn't a repeat of Maria. God! That thing was a fucking nightmare!" added Edith, arms crossed.
"You were there?" Marco quietly asked.
"Yeah and the similarities are bloody terrifying. I'm just hoping Eren's stubborn ass can pull this off…or y'know have Mikasa kick him into gear or something" Edith ended with a chuckle.
"Yeah, she's pretty good at that" chuckled Marco.
"It's not funny. I don't like the idea of so many of us being dead for nothing" Connie interjected, turning away from the group.
"We have to pick our battles. If we wanna wage all out war someday, we have to conserve all the manpower we can. This is the right call We just have to be patient" Jean said.
"Is it the right call, though?" Connie asked.
"Yes! Of course it was!"
"Live to fight another day, is that it?"
"…Y'know back during training, there was this little girl that I had to work on. She had come in with breathing problems" Eddie spoke up after a brief moment of silence.
"What? Where are you going with this?" Connie asked turning to face the trio. Marco and Jean also turned to face the shorter girl, confused at the sudden change in topic. Edith kept her eyes trained on Connie as she continued.
"I'd been one of the interns assigned to work on her that day. It was a simple problem, allergies. But you put a new mother and a young child with an allergic reaction and you get a trip to the clinic. Anyway, everything was going fine, in fact she was about to be released when she stopped breathing. We still don't know what caused it.
I had been the first one on the scene, and had started CPR straight away. But because she was so small, I wasn't pressing as hard as I would have if she had been older. The head nurse had come in and had told me to start pressing harder, which put me in a hard spot. Either I keep going the way I was and lose her or I press harder, break her ribs and have the possibility of her ribs pierce her lungs and kill her"
"Whats this got to do with anything?"
"With the options of guaranteed death and possible death, which one are you going to choose?"
"Well, the latter one of course"
"Exactly, as soldiers and medics, we have to remove ourselves from the situation. Disassociate ourselves and look at the problem logically. It is only then that we can see how to achieve our goals"
"…Right. I'm in…Hey, Edith? What happened to that little girl?"
"Ask her yourself, she's your sister after all"
What? Where…am I? What am…I doing? Am…I sitting? I can't…see. What day is it? Eren thought, warmth enveloping him as he blinked a few times, bringing his vision into focus. In front of him stood his family. His mother and sister were at the kitchen counter washing the dishes from their earlier meal and his father was sat at the table scribbling away in his journal. He himself was bundled up in blankets and seated on the window seat at the back of the room, exhaustion pulling at his eye lids. Wait…Oh, that's right. Of course.
"Eren? Come on! What are you doing? Wake up!" Armin said talking to himself, as he looked down at the slumped Titan form of his brother. Steam was rising from the Titan body, but none of his previous wounds were healing. Was it a mental thing, maybe? Had Eren become so lost in his mind that he couldn't wake up?
"Alright, here's the plan. We don't let a single one of these ugly S.O.B's wander out of this corner. Focus on luring them here and keeping them here, understood? Do not, I repeat, do not engage them in combat unless you absolutely have to. I want you on the ground, three cadets per team. When you reach the wall, you jump, that clear? Die and you'll piss me off. If a Titan goes astray, you put him down" stated the Captain.
"If? It's not like we can count on them to follow protocol" Jean muttered. Edith was sorely tempted to give him a nudge in the ribs, but that didn't change the fact she agreed with him.
"What if our situation gets risky? Are we free to act at our own discretion or what?" Annie piped up.
"Whatever will make it easier on you"
The group turned as one when the building across from their back alley exploded in a cloud of smoke and the ground shook with the thud of a Titan meeting its end. "Stay together and move out!"
"Yes sir!" the group chorused.
"MIKASA! WHY'D THE PLAN GO BELLY UP?" Armin called up to his friend as he stood upon Eren's slumped form.
"ARMIN?!" said Mikasa, surprised at her friend's sudden appearance.
"WHY'S HE JUST SLUMPED OVER LIKE THIS?"
"GET AWAY! IT'S DANGEROUS! SOMETHING WENT WRONG! HE LOST CONTROL AND WOUND UP LIKE THAT! I TRIED TO SNAP HIM OUT OF IT, BUT I COULDN'T GET HIM TO RESPOND!" The 'If I couldn't then you defiantly can't' went unsaid. "HE'S BEEN OUT LIKE THIS FOR THE PAST FEW MINUTES!"
"BUT THE PLAN!…"
"WE'VE HAD TO SHIFT TACT! RIGHT NOW ALL WE CAN DO IS PROTECT HIM! HE'S DEFENCELESS! THEERE'S…THERE'S JUST TOO MANY! I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH LONGER WE CAN KEEP THIS UP!"
"From the back of the head to the nape of the neck" Armin muttered as he stared down at the Titan's weak spot, pulling a blade from its sheath, he raised it in the air and prepared to plunge it into his brother's neck. "One metre wide and ten centimetres across"
"ARMIN!" Mikasa called, watching on from above.
"I'M PULLING HIM OUT OF THERE! YOU JUST HOLD OFF THE OTHER TITANS AS LONG AS YOU CAN!"
"But…"
"WHEN EREN FIRST EMERGED, IT WAS FROM THE WEAK SPOT. I DON'T KNOW, BUT SOMETHING TELLS ME THAT'S A BIG PART OF THE PICTURE. HOW THESE DAMN THINGS WORK, IT'LL BE ALL RIGHT AS LONG AS I DON'T HIT THE CENTRE. This won't kill him, but, well it is going to hurt. A lot" Plunging both of his wires into either of Eren's shoulder blades, Armin made sure that he was held fast before he struck his blade down through the flesh.
He could feel when his blade found Eren within, passing through flesh and bone before lodging itself in Eren's shoulder. Eren's Titan sat up straight a roar of pain falling from its jaws as it flailed around wildly trying to dislodge the pain from its shoulder from its seat on the floor. Armin held of for dear life, refusing to let go, afraid of what would happen if he did so.
"STOP IT! YOU'LL GET YOURSELF KILLED!" Mikasa yelled.
"I'M FINE! JUST DO WHAT YOU CAN TO KEEP THE REST AT BAY. TRUST ME THERE ARE TONS OF OTHER PEOPLE YOU SHOULD BE WORRIED ABOUT. NOW LEAVE EREN TO ME AND GO DO WHAT YOU DO BEST!" Armin shouted back as Eren's Titan slowly came to a stop, slumping back over into the same position as before.
"Eren! Can you hear me? You've got to pull it together! You stay like this, we're all going to die! Whatever this body's doing to you, fight it! Your Eren Jeager, dammit! What's this huge demon flesh have on you, huh?! Come on! Dammit! Wake up! Get out of there! We need you! Eren! It's their fault your mother's dead! Remember? Remember what they did to her? You're bent on avenging her death! You swore to massacre the Titans!"
"You're not making any sense Armin" Eren muttered tiredly to his blonde friend who was banging ruthlessly on the window. Strangely his family had yet to notice Armin's presence. "Open your eyes, Mum's not dead"
"Eren! Eren please! You have to push through it! I know you're in there! Listen to me! If you don't get a move on, the Titans are going to kill us and it'll all end right here!" Armin continued to pound on the window.
"Armin, seriously what the hell has gotten into you? What's his get a move on, crap? I don't wanna…move anything. This right here is good enough for me…It's not like I wanna be a soldier" Eren murmured as his mother locked eyes with him, a smile upon her face.
Edith dug her blades through the fleshy nape of an Abnormal as she zipped down the street, trying to get away from the Titans they had been luring towards the back corner of the Wall. At some point she had been split off from the squad she had been a part of.
Unable to make her way back to the Wall without encountering anymore Titans, she made her way over to where the elite squad was supposed to be stationed, to see if she could be of any help. Instead she found Armin clinging to a blade that had been plunged into Eren's shoulder.
"ARMIN! What the hell is going on?!" she called as she landed on the Titan's bowed head.
"Edith! What are you doing here?" the blonde replied.
"Doesn't matter. What's going on with Eren?"
"He's stuck inside. He won't respond to anything I've said, but he moved when I put the blade in his shoulder"
"Really?" Edith replied as she held her chin in thought, going into medic mode "So, we've got a Titan that responds to pain, but is unresponsive to verbal attempts…Maybe we could…But on a Titan? Would that work? Well, the biology's relatively the same, so I don't see why not…" Armin watched on as Edith mused aloud, her eyes flicking back and forth as if she were reading over something he couldn't see. "Armin! Keep talking to him! I wanna try something!" Edith called
"What are you doing?" Armin worried.
"My job" she called as she launched her wires into the Titan's left shoulder and abseiled down so that she was swinging right above where his heart should be. From her position she was just able to hear Armin's voice drift down towards her.
"Eren, please for me, wake up. Remember when we were kids? All we could talk about was the world outside. You know, beyond the Walls. Frozen tundra that stretches to the skies, sand dunes, oceans, forests. The world my parents wanted to see. I'd always thought you'd outgrown that dream, I was kind of sad that it didn't come up anymore but then I realised you let it go because you realised you didn't want me to join the Scouts"
"No I just…" Eren stood up from his perch by the window, his blanket falling to the floor.
"Tell me honestly, even though your first step beyond the Wall would mean the difference between a warm bed and hell on earth, even if you wound up risking your life, gambling against the possibility of dying like my parents. Why, why throw caution to the wind and venture outside the Walls?"
"What kind of question is that? Don't play dumb, you know damn well why. Because THE WORLD BEYOND THE WALL IS MY BIRTHRIGHT!" Eren screamed, the room around his setting ablaze and his family disappearing as if they had never been there.
"Oh, I hope this works" Edith muttered as she clapped her hands together and pressed them to the Titan's skin, right above where his heart should be. She had to narrow her eyes against the familiar bright electrical light (that was associated with alkahestry) that bloomed from beneath her hands and danced across the skin.
Edith felt the giant heart beneath her hands stutter once or twice as she reset its pace, before she had to quickly cease the alkahestry and dig her fingers into the flesh before her so as not to lose her grip as Eren's Titan rose to its feet with an almighty roar.