The blood begins coagulating on and around her inactive meat.
Above, Sasha launches herself into the face of the remaining titan with her blade pointed towards it. Stationed at her side. Reinforced.
It plinks into its face like a toothpick into a tomato, and as the monstrosity erupts a vicious noise and thrashes about, Sasha's grip on the hilt is tested.
Swinging from her hip to above her head, the strain almost breaks her arms.
Undeniably resilient, she dangles and bobs in front of her face like one of those cheap collapsing skeletons flopping about.
She loses her grip, and the blade with it. Disoriented, she falls. Snapping her self out of her disorientation in freefall, she engages the device at her hip and launches a spear blindly into the monster she tumbles from. Like a mishandled yo-yo, she snaps upward at the end of her line, her body trained to lend itself to the momentum instead of resisting it.
Still, it's jarring, and still, it hurts.
Pulling a lever, the line snaps and she falls from a much safer distance into a pile of Annie's intestines.
The beast above roars and thrashes a moment more before falling victim to another's blade in the back of its neck.
Sasha just watches for a moment.
"Fuh-fuckers," she huffs, trying to get the wind back in her. "Made me waste the good souvlaki."
It takes her a moment to catch her breath, and it takes her another to realize what mess she lies in.
Shrieking, she leaps up and tries to wipe the red slime off her clothes, smearing it.
Once past the moment of panic and into the thralls of disgust and ultimately acceptance, she is caught off guard when she notices the top half of Annie's torso, the bits that haven't been obliterated or savagely disassembled.
More specifically, she finds a profound moment in her wide, unblinking and soulless eyeballs. Staring lifelessly into the clear blue sky, reflecting the clouds.
Arbitrary fluffy shapes drifting in what may as well be a calming void.
Lifeless, soulless eyes. Impartial witnesses.
"I guess nothing changes," Sasha says. She smirks. "Not really."
Needless to say, when Annie starts screaming, Sasha nearly jumps out of her ass.
It's a soul shattering emission, which is appropriate, because even when Sasha regains her bearings, she can't begin to imagine the pain she's in.
She was literally just sitting in a pile of her torn intestines, after all.
She doesn't have those bearings for long, however, not once she notices the sticky meat on the floor, the blood liquifying once again, drawn towards Annie's torso like a magnet drawing in mercury at temperatures lower than four degrees Kelvin.
Bone shards and fragments bouncing like pebbles on a dramatically shifting tectonic plate.
Or marbles on a vibratron powered lazy suzan.
Sasha watches in dumbfounded horror as her flesh crawls across the floor, snailing blood trails behind it as it reunites with Annie's meat.
She's still screaming, louder even, as the automated reconstruction reconnects ligaments, bones and torn muscle under an ugly patchwork of broken flesh struggling to assimilate.
Upon reassembly, every rediscovered nerve ending in her development screams through her ruined vessel.
Sasha covers her ears. Her soul is vibrating.
A scourge of beasts, III
or; the true stink of a sinful fist.
"SASHA BLOUSE. WHAT IN THE NAME OF A SPITEFUL GOD HAPPENED HERE." Shadis's questions always sound like statements. And he's always shouting.
"Sir! I fell in through the hole in the roof and discovered Eren and Annie's fisting session had somehow gone awry! She was obliterated from the chest down, sir! That's when she started shrieking, and her body reformed itself!"
"AND WHERE IS JAGER?"
"All due respect sir, I don't know! But if I were to hazard a guess, he'd be stuck to the bottom of the foot that did this, sir!"
"YOU THINK A TITAN INTERRUPTED THE FISTING."
"It's the only logical explanation! Sir!"
"LEONHART REVERSING TOTAL OBLITERATION DOESN'T SEEM TOO LOGICAL TO ME, BLOUSE."
"Sir! All due respect! Neither does big people eating giants without junk, sir! We work with what we can!"
"I SUPPOSE THAT'S A FAIR ASSESSMENT. IT'S TOO BAD WE DON'T HAVE ANYTHING OF JAGER TO BURY."
"Sir! Might I suggest this souvlaki! It was ruined several times over in the incident, sir! I no longer wish to eat it, and it is the only thing I have in his memory. Sir!"
"FINE, FINE," Shadis says, taking the mashed and leaking foil from her hands and stuffing it in his own jacket. "WILL YOU BE TENDING THE FUNERAL?"
"Sir! I'd like to, sir! When is it being held! Sir!"
"OH EIGHT HUNDRED TOMORROW MORNING. COME IN UNIFORM. WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW WHERE ANNIE IS BEING TREATED?"
"No sir! I don't really like her all that much! Sir!"
"GOOD. THAT'S CLASSIFIED INFORMATION ANYWAY."
"Will there be anything else! Sir!"
"AT EASE."
Sasha salutes and this scene transitions into the next one.
"So," Hange says, flipping through her notes and scribbling something onto her clipboard. "Let's go over this again. What happened?"
Annie blinks, mildly annoyed. Her patience is wearing thin with this one. She doesn't bother telling her she's already told her this because she knows she already knows this.
"Eren Jager was fisting me. It was pretty routine. We had just gotten over the hump when I experienced the most painful thing I can currently imagine. The experience in and of itself was the very essence of my understanding for what felt like an eternity. That is, until, the soul blinding pain began to subside into regular, unimaginable pain, and that's when I noticed Eren was gone and Sasha Blouse was standing above me."
"And this pain, what did it feel like?"
Annie pauses, thinks about it.
"Like being the epicenter of a supernova with astronomically magnified nerves.."
"My god. That is beyond sexual."
Annie narrows her eyes in response.
"For me, I mean," she clarifies. "Maybe not for you. You don't remember anything else?"
Annie just shakes her head in disgust. She would have left already if she wasn't tied up.
"You weren't even aware of reconstructing your anatomy as if every cell in your body was a cheerleader getting back into formation?"
Annie makes a face like she smells a fart. "Excuse me?"
"I didn't think so," she says setting her clipboard down and standing up. She grabs a sledgehammer off the tool table. "Here's how this is going to go. I'm going to beat you to death with this hammer, understand? I'm going to beat you to death with this hammer, and I'm going to get real weird with it. I'm not going to stop until I literally dismember you with this heavy, blunt instrument. After I do that, well, we're just going to have to see what happens, won't we?"
Annie narrows her eyes.
"What in the hell are you doing out this far in Titan territory?"
The man repeats himself but before Eren's eyes his physical manifestation has altered, quite handsomely.
Not that he's handsome, or that you find him handsome, unless you do find him handsome, I suppose he's handsome in his own way and everybody is kinda handsome in their own way and that's okay, that's a trot I subscribe to. I'm just not putting any words in your mouth. Whether or not you think he's handsome is your own business, I don't like to make assumptions. What I meant to imply was that the change was substantial.
He's not a soldier, but looks to be some sort of farmer, or one of those mythical goblins what makes the moon shine as Eren's drunk father told him, or more accurately screamed at him during one of their many secret forest injection sessions.
"Wh-who are you?" Eren asks.
"I'm Fudge!" Fudge McCrackin says, hooking the link on one of his overalls straps with one thumb and extending the other as a form of expression.
Upwards, it's pointed. Towards the sky.
"Fudge McCrackin! You can call me Fudge."
He has a fancy carriage drawn by horses, either that or really big dogs, as far as Eren knows. He has many teeth missing, and a long and dirty beard. He's wearing coveralls over thermal underwear. He's got a hat. It tends to flatten itself against the hair coming out of the side of the hat. A corncob pipe juts from his puzzled teeth like an antennae of sorts. He also has a pickaxe for some reason.
"Hi Fudge," Eren says. "Fudge McCrackin."
"Youuuu never answered my question," Fudge McCrackin says, putting his hands on his hips. "What. In the hell. Are you. Doing. Out this far. In Titan. Territory."
"I, uh, I don't know, Fudge," he says, trying not to throw up again. "Any way you could give me a ride to Trost?"
"That all depends," Fudge says, licking his teeth. "How many chompers you got?"
"Excuse me?"
"Pearly whites," Fudge says, pointing to his own discolored jungle of a smile. "How many you got?"
Eren is visible frightened. "What is it you want from me?"
"I want at least two teeth for that kind of excursion," he says, really digging through the layer of sweat on his balls before sniffing his fingertips. "Yer too young for sexuals so I figger'd I'd give you a discount."
"Are you fucking serious."
"I'll go down to one and a half teeth. But that's it," Fudge McCrackin says. "That's the lowest I'm goin'."
ARMIN'S GHOST
*appears* Hey buddy what's happening.
EREN'S BRAIN
*startled* What the fuck man where did you come from.
ARMIN'S GHOST
I came from dirt. Where did you come from?
EREN'S BRAIN
The factory. I'm pretty sure I came from the factory.
ARMIN'S GHOST
What are you thinking about with this whole trade for your teeth business? Are you going to go through with it?
EREN'S BRAIN
I dunno, man. I kinda like having all my teeth.
ARMIN'S GHOST
It's a good deal, you should take it.
EREN'S BRAIN
What.
ARMIN'S GHOST
Yeah, dude. You need a ride, this guy needs your teeth. It's win-win.
EREN'S BRAIN
Not exactly. I need teeth to eat.
ARMIN'S GHOST
It's just two of them.
Eren sighs and so does his brain.
"Who the hell are you talkin' to?" Fudge asks, sharpening a rock on the end of his pickaxe.
"Nobody," Eren says. "Don't worry about it."
"That's fine," Fudge says, "I talk to god, too. Now, let's talk about my deal. Take it or leave it."
"How are we supposed to handle this?" Eren asks, cautiously.
"I tell you how we handle it," Fudge says, offering his newly sharpened rock and a small hammer. "You give me a goddamn tooth and a half, or I leave your ass stranded here."
"How will we manage?" Mikasa says to herself. "I can't even imagine starting life in Hermina. Especially without you."
Sasha bursts out laughing, which is definitely an inappropriate thing to do at a funeral. "You rube! You idiot! You absolute maroon! You think we're going to Hermina?"
"And why wouldn't we?" She sighs.
"Haven't you ever heard of classism!" Sasha cackles, howls with laughter. People are visibly upset. Especially Mikasa. "We aren't going anywhere."
"Maybe you belong here, but I don't." She huffs. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
"I'm here for Eren's marriage with mortality. I was the one who suggested the souvlaki."
"What an incredible contribution," Mikasa says sarcastically. "A greek sandwich rotting in the ground instead of my brother. Where would we be without you?"
"With nothing to bury," Sasha says. "Where were you on that front?"
"What are you doing here," Eren's not-sister repeats herself. "You weren't even at Armin's funeral."
"I gifted Eren an onion. That's the way I cry."
"Oh yeah?" She starts, flippantly. "Where's my goddamn onion?"
Sasha digs around in her pockets for a moment. She produces an onion and looks at Mikasa. "Look, I wasn't going to give you this until after the funeral, I didn't want to seem insensitive-"
"You gotta be fucking kidding me," she says, slapping away the onion.
"What? No. I'm being goshdamb vulnerable right now. How dare you implicate with emotions that aren't mine."
"Do you even know what your own emotions are?"
"I kinda wish it had been Annie instead of Eren. I liked Eren better, if I'm being honest." Sasha looks to her left at the unblinking Annie. "No offense."
"None taken," Annie says.
"Fuck off," Mikasa says, waving her off.
"No, seriously," Sasha says with little to no abandon. "There's a degree of charm you get from a boy whose daddy used to drag them out to the forest while screaming at them and injecting strange drugs into their bloodstream that you honestly just can't get anywhere else."
"What about her," Mikasa says, nodding towards Annie. "She's fucking crazy."
"None taken," Annie says, not really paying attention to what they're saying.
"She's boring crazy, though," Sasha says, hands on her hips, shifting her weight between feet. She does this sometimes. "Doesn't have feelings until they explode in obnoxious ways, boo-hoo, I get it. No offense, Annie."
"None taken," Annie says, barely registering that they exist.
"Don't make this about Annie," Mikasa says, "This is about you, not caring about anything."
"None taken."
"You don't know a thing," Sasha says, "if I didn't care, I wouldn't have wasted a goshdamb onion."
Eren pulls the corner of his mouth outward and spreads his lips wide. When he smacks his molar, he knocks some shards into the spread palm of the old man Fudge McCrackin.
He's not sure where his mouth is bleeding from, because everything kinda hurts from his teeth to his gums to his lips. But he knows it is bleeding.
"Isth thatckt enoughff halff?"
"Lemme see the tooth."
Eren tries to stretch his smile back that hard again. "Isth good, yeh?"
"I'm gonna need more tooth than that," Fudge says, and when he says it, he means it.
Eren tries not to hit the nerve of his tooth and just chip off the new oral geography, but he fails, and he takes some of the flesh off his lips with it.
Fudge has to fetch a shard out of the dirt but he's still kind of pleased.
"Alright, now a whole tooth," Fudge says. "Aim for high on your gums this time."