"The 104th Cadet Corps Class Entrance Ceremony will now begin! You have the misfortune of having me, Keith Shadis, as your commander! I do not welcome you warmly! Right now you are nothing more than food for the titans! You're mere livestock! You're less than livestock! Over the next three years, we're going to train you worthless nothings and teach you how to kill titans! Three years from now, when you come face-to-face with the titans, will you still be fodder for them? Will you serve as an honorable barrier that protects the king? Or will you be a glorious soldier for humanity that drives the titans out? It's up to you to decide!"
The entrance ceremony to the Cadet Corps started with this speech. It was a good one, no doubt written and rehearsed beforehand to optimally encourage and/or scare the recruits as needed. I couldn't lie as say it wasn't effective though. The mention of being food for the titans was enough to make anyone scared these days.
There were about one hundred and fifty of us lined up in rows in the main courtyard of the training camp. It was just after lunch, so everyone had full stomachs and it was the heat of the day, meaning they picked this time to make us uncomfortable as possible. After his speech, Commander Shadis started to go up and down the rows asking people who they were. He started with Armin.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Armin Arlert, from Shiganshina District!" I was a to the right of Armin could see him shaking. I didn't blame him. This man was scary from his eyes to his boots.
"I see, that's a ridiculous name. Did your parent's give it to you?"
"My grandfather did, sir!"
"Arlert, why are you here?"
"To help humanity achieve victory, sir!"
"Wonderful to hear! We can feed you to the titans. Third row, about face!" He turned my brother around so he was facing the opposite direction.
Apparently I was making too obvious that I was watching the scene, because Shadis turned to me next.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Alexandria Arlert from Shiganshina District, sir!" I tried not to shake as much as my brother, but I couldn't pretend to say I wasn't intimidated.
The commander looked from me to my brother and said, "Siblings? Did the same grandfather give you that ridiculous name?"
"Twins, sir! Yes, sir!"
"Why are you here, Arlert?"
"To kill titans and protect humankind!"
"Splendid! You can die with your brother!"
I turned on my own before he could grab my head and do it. For a second I thought that was a mistake, and I'd have to do my mini-interrogation over again, or worse. But he moved on to the row behind us to a guy named Thomas Wagner. From there the intimidation game kept getting more ridiculous. When he got to a girl named Mina with pigtails, and she told him where she was from, he responded with, "No, you are from a barn! You are less than pigsty!"
"Yes, sir!"
A boy named Jean Kirstein made the mistake of giving an honest answer to the Commander's question instead of an honorable one.
"To join the military police and live in the interior!"
"Oh, you want to join to live in the interior, do you?"
"Yes!" the Commander immediately smashed his head against Jean's and Jean fell to his knees.
"Who said you could sit? If this is too hard for you, you'll never make it into the military police?"
I think if I wasn't also scared of getting on the wrong side of the commander, I would've laughed. One girl, however had no such fear. As the Commander was punishing a boy who saluted on the wrong side, a girl on the row behind him took a huge bite of a baked potato.
To say everyone was shocked was cutting it short. I was glad I was far away from the Commander at this point so he couldn't see my awestruck expression.
"Hey, you! What are you doing?"
The girl looked from side to side as if the Commander could possibly be talking to someone else, and then took another bite of her potato.
"I'm talking to you! Who the hell are you?"
"I'm Sasha Blouse from the Dauper Village on the south side of Wall Rose!"
"What is that you're holding in your right hand?"
"A steamed potato, sir!"
"Why do you have a potato, Blaus?"
"I saw it ready in the cookhouse and couldn't help myself, sir."
"You stole it? Why? Why did you decide to eat it now?"
"I decided it would be a waste to let it get cold, so I decided to eat it now."
"I don't understand. Why did you eat the potato?"
"Are you asking me why people eat potatoes, sir?"
The whole courtyard was silent. No one could believe the balls this girl had. Either that, or the lack of brains. Either way, I already thought this girl was amazing.
The girl must've realized how much trouble she was, because she took the potato and broke it in "half". She took the smaller portion and held it out to the commander. "Here you can have half."
"'Half'?" the commander repeated.
Poor Sasha Blouse ran for hours after that, and got dubbed a nickname she would hate for years to come: Potato Girl.
At almost dinner time, I dragged Mikasa out of the girls' barracks to the mess hall. This would be our first meal with our new comrades, and I was more excited about it than Mikasa.
"I don't see the big deal. We didn't join to make friends," she complained.
"I know, but these people are going to be our comrades that we fight with one day. We need to be as close with them as we are with Eren and Armin. So it looks good to get to dinner early on the first day and make friends."
She made a "hmph" noise and crossed her arms, and I realized my mistake.
"Okay, maybe not as close as with Eren and Armin, but they're going to be our comrades and we're going to get to know them anyway by the end of these three years. Why not put the best foot forward and start now?"
She considered that for a second before nodding.
"Okay, let's start with smiling," I said.
"What?" Mikasa turned to look at me with wide eyes.
"To get people to like and trust you, you have to smile. You've never smiled much, ever."
"So why should I start now?"
"To get people to like and trust you, I just said that. Now let's see it."
Mikasa had grown a lot in just the past two years, she looked less like a little girl and more of a young woman. I had recently found that it wasn't fair that was both gifted with physical strength and beauty. I looked just like my twin brother with longer hair and slightly more feminine features. But as pretty as she was, forced smiles didn't look good on her. She looked constipated.
"Okay… Try less? Like more natural?"
When her second attempt at smiling went as poor as the first, I told her it was probably best to just act normal.
When we reached the porch of the mess hall, Eren and Armin were already there, along with the pigtail girl, Mina, Marco, who wanted to join the Military Police, and Connie, who had saluted wrong and got lifted off the ground by his head. They were talking about Potato Girl, who we could still see running in the distance.
"Man, it's been five hours, she sure is made of something. I think being told that she had to run until near death didn't bother her as much as being told she had to skip meals," commented Eren.
"She's a legend. She was one of the only ones didn't piss their pants when Shadis spoke to them. She's either legendarily brave or legendarily stupid," I said to the group.
Marco frowned at me, "Did you see her look around when the Commander first spoke to her? Like someone else was casually eating a potato in the middle of the ceremony?"
"Yes! That was the best part!"
"She's definitely legendarily stupid," said Connie.
"Ah," I smiled, "But you do agree that she is legendary?"
Connie blushed and stuttered, but before he could get out a good answer, Eren asked, "What's that?"
We all looked up to see a wagon pulling out of the camp with people sitting huddled in the back.
"They're dropouts. They asked to leave and do work in the fields instead," explained Mina.
"What?" Armin exclaimed, "It's only the first day!"
"All he's done is yell at us," I agreed.
"All he did to you is yell," corrected Connie. "He picked me up by the head."
"That's just how it is here," cut in Eren. "If you can't make it then you've got to go."
Connie, Marco, and Mina looked at him in surprise. Armin, Mikasa, and I were used to him being too serious for his own good.
"Come to think of it, I haven't heard anything about where you're from," said Marco.
Eren smiled and put his hand on Armin's shoulder while also gesturing to Mikasa and I, "I'm from Shiganshina, all four of us are."
Marco gave us a sad look, "Oh. That means…" he trailed off.
Connie finished for him, "You all were there that day, weren't you?"
"Yes, we were," I replied, not particularly liking where the conversation was going.
"You saw the Colossal Titan?" exclaimed Connie, while Marco looked at him with wide eyes.
"Y-yes," stuttered Eren while I nodded. Neither of us expected the response we got from that.
Dinner turned into an interrogation. Armin and Mikasa split themselves from us after Connie started telling everyone that Eren and I had seen the Colossal Titan. I ended up sitting next Eren, who drank up the attention a lot better than I did. This was not how I imagined making friends on the first night would go.
"Yes, I saw it," said Eren, this time much more confident. He really was a little shit.
"What did the Colossal Titan look like?"
At least fifteen people were crowded around our little table. I tried my best to ignore them and eat my soup and bread in peace.
"It was big and had no almost no skin," said Eren before taking a sip of his soup, trying to look cool.
"I heard it was big enough to step over the wall!"
"Yeah that's what they said in my village too!"
"No," said Eren, "it wasn't that big."
I turned and looked at him, "Could you imagine if it was though?" Everyone who was paying attention to Eren turned and looked at me as soon as I spoke. I gulped, so much for eating my meal in peace. But I was the idiot who opened my mouth, so I went ahead kept talking. "If it was big enough that it could've stepped over the wall, we'd all be dead right now probably. It wouldn't have even needed the Armored Titan. As it was, only the chin up could look over the wall, and it did plenty of destruction as just that size."
Everyone was silent for a moment, taking that in before someone asked the next obvious question.
"What did the Armored Titan look like?"
"People say it was an 'armored titan' but it looked like a normal titan to me," said Eren.
"Stop being a little shit," I winced as I said it aloud. I had meant to think that.
Eren looked at me, and said "What?"
"It was not a normal titan and you know it. Stop trying to act cool."
"What does a normal titan look like? What was the difference?"
All the attention was on me now, Eren even stared at me expectedly.
"Well, the Armored Titan wasn't as tall as the Colossal Titan, but it still looked bigger than the normal ones. And its body was covered in armor strong enough to bust through Wall Maria. It had gold eyes and breathed fire."
"Gold eyes?"
"Breathed fire?"
"Yeah, instead of normal eyes and pupils like the normal titans, its eyes were a solid color. I don't know why it breathed fire. I also didn't see the normal titans up close like Eren did, but it's true what they say in books; titans lumber about awkwardly looking for humans to gobble up. The Armored Titan ran straight through the wall, gracefully, in a runner's position. He didn't care about eating the humans around him. And he broke the wall just as the soldiers were closing the gate…"
"You're saying the Armored Titan was intelligent, and was acting according to a plan," said Marco. "You said earlier that if the Colossal Titan was tall enough to step over the wall, he wouldn't need the Armored Titan. You think that the titans are capable of working together and forming plans? And following them through?"
"Not all titans," I said quickly, "I said the normal ones were different. But from what little but I saw, I think those two were intelligent."
I had been looking at my bowl of soup the whole time I spoke, and when I finally looked up I saw the whole hall staring. My face and ears turned red, and I looked at Eren, who was looking at me with a serious expression.
"You've never said anything like that before," he said.
"It's not something I ever wanted to acknowledge."
Eren broke eye contact with me to turn and look at his bowl.
I stood up and announced, "I'm done eating. I hope everyone gets a good night's sleep before the first real day of training." I picked up my dishes to put away and left the table, then stopped and turned back around. I had the attention of the entire room still, and although I didn't like that, I picked up my courage again.
"Does anyone have any leftover bread they won't finish? I want to bring one or two to Potato Girl."
If my declarations about the Armored and Colossal Titans shocked, that shocked them more. The boy named Jean who got head butted stood up and said, "Why?" while Mina and a few others murmured, "Oh my god, I forgot about her. She's still running."
A large boy that had been at the table in front of me and Eren raised his loaf of bread in the air without looking up. I walked over and took it out of his hand.
"Thanks. She needs calories if she wants to survive tomorrow, too."
He looked up to meet my gaze. He was probably the most muscular boy in the whole class, and had eyes that matched the shade of yellow his hair was.
"No problem, I wasn't going to finish it anyway. I'm Reiner Braun," he stuck out his hand for me to shake. At the point, thankfully, the mess hall was no longer watching me because I was sure I was blushing. Why are you blushing, I thought to myself angrily.
I smiled and took his hand like I wasn't five different shades of pink and said, "I'm Alex Arlelt."
"Hm. Tell me, Alex, where did you get all that about the titans being intelligent? Isn't common knowledge that the titans are mindless?"
I cocked my head to the side, "Do you believe everything you're told in school Reiner?"
"Uh…"
"It's also common knowledge that the government doesn't know enough about the titans to beat them. So they could be wrong. Or I could be wrong. I'm basing my theory from what I saw as a scared ten year old girl. I'm no expert on titans either."
"Right," he said. "I'm sorry you had to something like that so young, though."
I furrowed my eyebrows at him, "Sorry? It's not your fault." Before he could answer, the bell rang, signaling the end of dinner time.
"I gotta go find Potato Girl and give her this bread. I'll see you around."
I turned quickly, growing irritated of the heat that was growing on my cheeks. In the middle of the room, I saw Eren and Jean standing facing each other like they were about to fight. Then Jean held out his hand and said, "Let's be friends," to which Eren smacked his hand away and walked right out of the door. I rolled my eyes and felt Mikasa join me as I walked out. As we were walked out, Jean stopped us, or rather, he stopped Mikasa.
"Hey, you!"
"Yes?" said Mikasa.
"I've just never seen anyone like you before. You have pretty black hair."
I rolled my eyes and walked out the door. That was almost as dumb as Eren saying the Armored Titan looked like a normal titan.
After I left the mess hall, I hugged my shawl closer to my shoulders and started looking for Potato Girl. If there was one person I wanted to make friends with these three years, it was her. A voice at back of head whispered, and Reiner Braun, but I pushed it away.
While looking for Potato Girl, I heard a soft voice calling for me, "Hey, you're Alex right?"
I turned and looked down to a pretty, tiny girl. She looked almost like me, but prettier and shorter. "Yes, who are you?"
"I'm Krista Lentz, and I heard you saying you were going to save bread for Sasha. I was also going to bring her bread and water, but since you brought bread I just brought water."
"That's great! Do you want to be her friend too?"
"What?" she looked up at me, confused.
"I'm bringing her bread because I thought what she did was amazing. I want to be her friend."
"Oh. I'm just bringing her bread because I thought it was a nice thing to do."
I shrugged, "That's a good reason, too. Come on. Let's find her."
When we did find her, she was passed out between two buildings. As we approached, she suddenly jumped up and threw herself at me. I fell backwards and Krista jumped away. I looked down at my hands and saw that I was no longer holding the bread. It was now in her mouth.
Whoa, I thought. How much more amazing can this girl get?
"This is… bread?" she exclaimed.
"Yes," said Krista. "Alex brought you bread from dinner. I brought you some water, too, you should probably drink this first." She held out the bag of water while I stood up and smiled at Sasha.
Sasha looked at us in amazement. "Are you two gods?"
"What?" I said, laughing.
"Are you gods? Or angels?" she grabbed both of our shoulders, and for a second I thought she'd hug us but a taller brunette with freckles emerged from the shadows behind her first.
"What are you three doing?"
Sasha started gobbling up the piece of bread as soon as the freckled girl spoke. I grabbed the water from Krista and held it out to Sasha while Krista answered, "Well, she's been running nonstop for hours. So, we brought her some bread and water."
"I see," said the freckled girl. "Trying to do something 'nice', huh?"
"Yeah," I said. "What's wrong with that?"
The freckled girl ignored me and kept her eyes locked on Krista. After Sasha finished eating, she collapsed onto Krista's lap.
"Are you doing it for Potato Girl's sake? Was what you gained worth the effort you took?"
The tension between freckled girl and Krista was getting a little uncomfortable. Krista stared at the girl like she'd never thought of such things before.
"I don't think you understand the meaning of 'being nice'," I frowned.
"Well, whatever. Let's get her to bed," the girl picked Sasha up from Krista's lap.
"Are you trying to be nice too?" asked Krista.
The freckled girl smiled, "I'm doing this so she'll owe me later."
I frowned, and thought, what a terrible reason. But then realized my reasonings weren't much better, and followed the two of them back to the girls' barracks.
