AN: Alright, important things to clear up before everybody starts reading and gets confused. This story is set in a world inspired by the anime/manga Bleach and uses characters and plot points from other anime/manga redesigned to fit the molds offered by that world. With that said, I won't be sticking religiously to the lore or mechanics of Bleach, nor will characters from that series be appearing. Knowledge of other involved series' is not a requirement, but I'd recommend brushing up on the basics of Attack on Titan (Parts 1 and 2) and Naruto to get the most out of the story. With that said, I hope you enjoy this weird plot bunny.

Thank you,

Scavenger

Prologue

Nines and Threes

Eren woke up in a room, on a bed. He was over the covers, rather than under, lying perfectly straight. The ceiling above him was white. The walls were white. Sitting up and looking around, he saw that not only the bed itself, but also the door on the other side of the room was white. It was simple, no carvings or anything really; just a spherical white doorknob and a nearly invisible crack of shadow that marked the seam. He didn't want to leave the room; the bed was comfortable…

But somewhere at the back of his mind, he thought he heard an alarm or a loud horn. Now that he thought of it, the scent of burning things was just present enough to be perceptible and he could hear muffled roars through the wall. Getting up tentatively from the mattress, he walked to the door. The floor was freezing on his toes: seamless stone. His hand closed slowly around the handle of the door, and with a twist and a push, he walked out into the world.

The world was apparently a very long, dingy hallway. The walls might once have been a similar white to those in the room, but they were yellowing and beginning to flake. Lights flickered above him. He heard a sharp click and whirled on the spot; the door was gone. The lack of windows meant he was devoid of any sort of context. Barely a moment later, the man appeared.

He was tall, wearing a coat that had probably been white before whatever incident had drenched it in blood. His spiky blonde hair was likewise marred and his breathing was haggard. Eren's hand instinctively crossed his torso and drew a sword. In doing so, he realized he had one.

Within the second it had taken Eren to react to his presence, the man had dropped into a crouch, created a blue ball of something in his hand and smashed out through the wall. The ball expanded and collided violently with a giant multi-tailed something before both man and beast disappeared. As he braced himself against the air rushing into the suddenly unoccupied space, Eren's response was once again instinctual.

"What the fuck?" In saying this, he realized he could speak. The view presented to him by the new opening in the wall was not pretty. A stunning city spread out before him, extending all the way to the horizon. Every bit of it was engaged in some form of chaos. Buildings were mostly collapsed, on fire, or both, which explained the smoke that suddenly seemed to be at least half of the air. He could see several enormous beasts, each easily as tall as any buildings still standing and each stranger looking than the last. One of them looked like a deformed turtle, another resembled a giant, horned ape. Even as he watched, something that looked vaguely like a bull on top of an octopus was uppercutted by a giant arc of lightning. The only things that made them similar were their size and the porcelain masks over their faces. Further inspection revealed that smaller monsters were everywhere. Screams drifted up from the streets below, and Eren took a step back from the dizzying drop before him, sword clattering to the floor as vertigo threatened to take away his footing.

He couldn't remember anything, but he definitely knew things, like how it was common sense to step back from situations such as the one he saw below and let the adults handle them. A few strides backward and he lost the battle for stability, collapsing in a sort of dazed shock against the wall, sinking into a sitting position with his legs out before him. "What…" He couldn't understand. Where, why and how were only the most prominent of the questions before him, and quite frankly, he wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with any of it.

But then he heard two sounds. They weren't especially strange in the context of this place he found himself; plenty of them were filtering up from the city below. But these ones were close by, agonizingly within reach. They were a crash and a scream; clear signs of a person in need of help. 'Your help.' whispered a voice that he suspected might be his conscience.

'None of that matters at all. Help first. Clarify later.' Something like fire flooded his veins and he stood, picking up his sword with a hand steadied by new and profound purpose. The feeling was comfortable, familiar, a warm hearth he hadn't known he'd missed.

Without a single thought more, he shot down the hall, and into a brand new world.

SF

Mikasa didn't think she'd always felt like this. This emptiness that permeated her as the beast advanced, the boy behind her, quivering behind blonde bangs and raised arms; it all felt as though it should mean something… more. As though she were missing something. Disappointment reigned chiefly in her mind, that not fifteen minutes into this new life, she was already about to die again.

The creature was something like a giant scab-brown mantis, if a mantis could have teeth and hands like a man who had torn and bitten his way out of a long-abandoned grave. The large eyes behind its white mask had glowed strangely as it smashed through the wall into the hallway, intent on snapping up both her and the boy who had taken to following her around. Its grin was devoid of emotion, even as it drew back a hand to swat at her again. A blow from the appendage had grazed her once before; something to the right of her spine was in excruciating pain, even with the numbing rush of adrenaline in her veins. A fractured rib she guessed.

"AAAAAAGH!" Seemingly out of nowhere, a sword slammed into the creature's head, sending it reeling, whirling to face this new, much louder threat. But whoever it was, he had wrapped his arm around the thing's neck, and taken to hacking at its eye with his sword. It screamed in outrage, and swatted at him wildly. His blade swung to meet the blow, but was knocked aside effortlessly, along with its owner. The clang of the bloody metal hitting the floor was loud in Mikasa's ears, and he met the wall with a strangled yell of pain, scrambling out of the way of a swiftly descending hand. He was young, in his early teens at most, with dark hair and vaguely olive skin.

Thanks to his effort at dodging, he managed to not get his ribcage crushed open. He was not, however, fast enough to save his arm his arm, which broke with a loud crack and another agonized cry. Mikasa knew his face. She knew him, somehow. And she knew one more thing.

This boy needed to live.

Quickly considering her options, her eyes found the sword. The monster's back was turned. She bent down and grasped the weapon, hand shaking with the usual battlefield mix of terror, pain, and adrenaline as she leveled it before her. The boy had scrambled to his feet, but his arm was hanging limp at his side and as she watched, he took another blow, this time in the chest. Glancing again, but when he hit the wall, he didn't get up.

The blade settled in her hands. Her foot rose, and came down. Something grated against itself in her back, but she forced herself to ignore it, because the thing was pulling back a hand. She took the next excruciating step, and the next, and the next, and yet still the blow had not begun to descend.

She leapt, brought down the sword, felt hard armor give under a force she hadn't known she could produce.

A gurgling, screaming cry of animalistic pain sprang from the thing's mouth, and as it reeled back, the hard steel came loose. Mikasa didn't stop. She came at it again, dodged past a swipe and drove the weapon point-first through its throat. There was no scream this time, just a low gurgle as blood gushed from the hole she'd punched in its windpipe. It stumbled back, hand clutching at its neck. The sword came loose with a squelching noise and Mikasa felt liquid life dripping down her face. Moaning pitifully, the thing collapsed as she rubbed the blood out of her eyes.

Rather abruptly, the strength she had felt began to ebb, even as she walked over, slid the new boy's sword back into its sheath and picked him up bridal style. The other boy was gazing with horror, sometimes at her, sometimes at the swiftly dissipating carcass she'd just made. "You, blonde boy. I'm going to look for a way out. Are you coming?" It hurt to speak. She resolved to keep talking to a minimum for the moment.

Apparently it wasn't a hard choice for him to make. He hurried after her down the corridor, away from the first violent moments of three violent lives.