Eren's told Armin everything he can remember of what Jean told him about the alligator or crocodile that PROBABLY DOESN'T live in the lake. Though Armin knows more than Eren does about these creatures, he still feels vastly unprepared to effectively track one.
"Their feet look a little like duck feet and a little like hands," Armin reminds Eren, showing him one of the rough drawings he made, again. "I don't know exactly how many toes they have, but this is a rough idea of what to look for, for tracks. As far as what to look for in the water, they can look a lot like logs sometimes, so don't rule out logs just at first glance. I don't… I don't know if they come out at night or during the day. I don't know how deep in the water they can go."
"Got it," Eren says.
"I wish I could be more help," Armin says.
"What? You're amazing," Eren says, a little surprised. In his eyes, Armin might as well have a PhD in Crocodilian Studies, how do so many facts even fit into one person's head?
"Shhhhh!" Armin says suddenly. Both boys freeze.
You have to go through the woods a ways to get to the lake, the lake is in the woods, Eren and Armin are in the woods now, and that was definitely a snapping twig. It doesn't take long before they're sure of what they're hearing: someone or something coming towards them through the trees.
Naturally, their first thought is of alligators and crocodiles, but second and third thoughts, fourth thoughts, more thoughts, quickly step in, bringing logic. The lake is very close, but the sounds are coming from the direction the boys came from. It sounds a lot more like a person than a low-to-the-ground, flat thing with four stubby legs, too. Were they followed? Are they about to get caught? Getting caught would be VERY BAD. Sasha had to run laps until she was uncomfortably close to death, just for eating a potato when she wasn't supposed to. To be out here in these woods right now, Eren and Armin are risking pain. Increasing the likelihood of being kicked out of the military, even, maybe? Eren can't remember exactly what happens to you if you get caught running around after dark, but he knows Armin surely must, and Armin looks scared silly.
"Eren, is that you?" says Jean's hushed voice, coming from the general direction of the walking sounds.
Oh.
OH.
Now Eren's just MAD.
"JEAN! Go to hell you pompous mooch muffin!" he hisses into the trees, betrayed, vulnerable, angry.
"Eren, it IS you! I'm so glad I found you!" Jean says, as if he hadn't even heard the insult. Does he sound worried? Relieved? What?
"There's two of us, Jean," Armin says warningly, as Jean finally emerges into the outskirts of their circle of lantern light, visible at last. Maybe Armin wouldn't be much use in a fight, but by simply being here he undeniably raises the number of kids on Eren's team to two, which technically makes Jean outnumbered, and that has to count for something. And Armin's ready to at least try and fight, as he always has been. Nobody's even given the slightest indication that violence will be forthcoming, but that's the kind of bullies Armin's used to, and he will never not consider a bully to be easily capable of violence, if not intending to be violent from the start.
"Eren," Jean says urgently, ignoring Armin and walking up to Eren, "I'm so glad I found you before you got to the lake. Don't go. Please don't go. There really is something out there. I brought it up because I thought it would be really ironic if you couldn't go check out something from beyond the walls but knew about it, ha ha ha, I wanted to make you frustrated. I never thought you'd actually go look for it, but please, you just can't, it's too dangerous. It was a lie when I said I'd been around the lake and hadn't seen anything. I never went near the lake after that upperclassman told me there was a monster there. He was really really serious about it. I may not like you, but I really don't want you to be dead. I'm risking getting caught here to save you; please believe me; please don't go near the lake, I'm really serious this time, you have to trust me."
He does sound pretty serious, but Eren doesn't trust him enough for that to even mean anything. At this point, all Eren knows is, there's only one way to find out whether or not there's a creature from beyond the walls in that lake, and that's to press on ahead.
"I'm done talking to you, Jean," he snaps, still hurting from being discovered, this is precisely why he went at night. He turns to continue along his way, towards the lake.
"EREN, NO," Jean pleads, grabbing for Eren's arm; before Jean sees it coming, Armin's smacked him across the face with a big stick, HARD. Jean shouts in pain and surprise, he can't help it.
The three of them freeze and look around the silent woods.
That was pretty loud.
"What the HELL was that for?" Jean hisses at Armin, finally, when hordes of upperclassmen with rulebooks fail to spring from the tree canopy on 3D gear.
Armin just looks stunned. He wasn't expecting to be able to hurt someone. He knows he's gotten stronger, what with all of the training he's been going through, but it's hard to view that in the context of better fighting ability. Armin doesn't win fights. Armin isn't threatening. Armin gets pushed around. Armin should run away or wait for Eren or Mikasa to help him.
Well, the training, and finding the stick was probably helpful, too.
"I said, what was that for," Jean growls, bending down a little, moving closer a little, threatening, and Armin backs up quickly, brandishing the stick – "Don't touch Eren, and don't touch me!"
"Armin was right, what he said before, you're outnumbered," Eren says, adopting a threatening pose of his own next to Armin, more than happy to turn this into a fight if that's how Jean wants it. He's a excited now; his opinion of Armin's usefulness in combat just went way up, and it's a little electrifying to be standing next to a decently competent ally and know the two of you can totally take out your opponent.
Jean mellows and backs up, looking conflicted.
"...Look," he says, putting up his hands in defeat, "I can't drag both of you back. If you have the nerve to be ready to beat me up for trying, I'm not gonna touch you, it's not worth it, I have a heart but I'm no saint. I'm warning you, though, DON'T go. I'm not being funny, there seriously is a monster at the lake, it can seriously hurt you, hitting it in the face with a stick isn't going to save you from that."
"I'll hit you in the face with a stick again," Armin squeaks, simultaneously terrified and elated, oh gosh, he and Eren could so take this kid, they really could, they really, truly could.
Jean backs up some more, bitter and a little alarmed. "FINE, go on ahead and get eaten, see if I care," he snaps. He still looks conflicted, though, like maybe he does care a little, and he doesn't go away.
What ends up happening is, Eren and Armin troop on forwards, and Jean follows them at a distance. By the time they get to the lake, Eren and Armin really are a bit creeped out. Jean's being awfully persistent and concerned for a prankster. It's very dark, and the shadows have a way of, sort of, becoming alligators and crocodiles. The boys have never even seen one of these things before, which makes it all the worse. How fast can alligators run? How fast can crocodiles run? Armin didn't know when Eren asked him. "Everything I know about them isn't useful," he'd complained. Eren had reminded him about the thing where crocodalligators or whatever didn't even chew their food, they just ripped it up and swallowed chunks, that was pretty cool, that was a good one to remember, Armin.
Speaking.
Of which.
WOW.
OKAY.
Okay.
ok
As the three walk around the uneasy waters, Jean kind of inches closer and closer to Eren and Armin, and his company becomes more and more welcome, and by the time they've been about a fourth of the way around he's walking right behind them and they're absolutely okay with it. At this rate they'll be holding hands at the halfway point. No, they don't hold hands at the halfway point, but it's about there that Armin starts telling Jean alligator/crocodile facts, in a hushed whisper.
That leaves Eren as the one who's paying the most attention to his surroundings.
That means Eren is the first one to see the pile of bones.
He freezes, and the others nearly walk into him. All he has to do is point.
Jean lightly takes hold of Eren and Armin's sleeves and starts to pull them away respectfully. Urgently so. Desperately so.
"Guys I'm scared," he breathes, "I'm really scared, please don't go any further, I don't want this on my conscience, I don't wanna be the kid who got two other kids to go die, I don't want to die, let's get out of here."
Armin and Eren pull their arms free, shush Jean, stoop to examine the bones. They are scared out of their minds, but this is getting good. Really good.
Then Armin GRABS Eren, points very urgently at the water.
A dark spot, about as long as Eren's forearm. A head. A reptilian head. Complete with beady eyes, a blunt, paddle-shaped nose, and a multitude of teeth poking out of a dangerous grin that can only mean death.
"That creature has teeth like a crocodile's, and their noses are supposed to taper off, not be all wide like that," Armin says in a horrified whisper, eyes fixed on the reptilian apparition, still holding Eren very tightly, frozen to the spot. "This doesn't match the picture I saw of an alligator. It doesn't match the picture I saw of a crocodile either."
"…What?" Eren responds, in much the same tone, also staring at the head, likewise frozen to the spot.
"These bones have knife marks on them," Armin continues, in that same horrified whisper, a few seconds later. He's still looking at the head in the water about 70% of the time, but he's holding a bone now, one from the pile on the beach, and looking at that off and on, too. "They're too big for deer bones. Deer are the biggest things in the woods. I think they're cow bones. I think they came from the trash cans just outside the kitchen."
"...what?" Eren responds, in much the same tone, still staring at the head, still frozen to the spot.
And then Jean starts CRACKING UP, and Eren really does attack him.
Armin just kind of sits there on the pebbly little beach, deflated and sad and not really sure what to do and still pretty worked up. He's still glancing back at that head in the water now and then, he can't help it. The more he looks at it, the easier it is to tell that this is a handmade object, and not handmade by an artist, exactly. It's getting harder and harder to remember why he even thought it was real. Relieved as he is to not be in danger, he's bitterly disappointed. Alligators and crocodiles are extremely fascinating, and he's not going to get to see either one. Ever, probably. It was a cruel thing for Jean to prank them about.
It starts to dawn on him that Jean shouldn't know enough about alligators to make a replica of one or describe one when Eren and Jean scramble past him, on their way to the water, on Eren's way to the water, to dunk Jean's head in, and of course Jean is resisting, there's a lot of tussling and grouching, and Jean isn't quite finished laughing, either; their combined noise is actually pretty loud, considering how none of them want to get caught. On their way past Armin, Eren or Jean accidentally kicks him, then as he's getting out of the way his foot gets stepped on.
"Ouch," Armin says quietly, scootching a lot farther back. He realizes there's a chance he could cry and struggles to fight it.
He really wanted to see an alligator. Or a crocodile. And now his knee hurts. And his foot hurts. And the other kids are fighting. And they're out by a creepy lake at night when he should be sleeping, everything looks unfamiliar, and they could get in trouble on the way back, assuming they find their way back, and this adventure will be paid for in sleep regardless of whether they get caught or not.
Suddenly, a yard or so away, there's a large, loud splash made by something very big.