So I went to write this chapter and then remembered that I outlined all of the "Fall of Shiganshina" chapters a ways back and I went digging through and uh... I wrote like 90% of this chapter in July 2014. As in one full year ago. Actually, slightly over a year ago given that it is 28 July 2015 and the original doc was created on 17 July 2014.
Holy balls I forgot how long I've been wanting to write this arc.
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For such a small thing, a single bullet can turn an entire world upside down.
Somebody – they never found out who – decided to put that world-shattering bullet in the head of Dot Pixis.
Everybody had their guesses and nobody had any answers. It was no secret that Woerman wanted power but no, he lost control too soon. The more ruthless and power hungry pushed him out immediately as he failed to reign in the dissent. Once a pillar of stability and unity, the Stationary Guard spiraled out of control. Newer members pushed out the core founders and there was no way that Hannes and Brzenska and the rest of the old guard could ever hope to control it; without Pixis the vacuum opened and those seeking blood and money stepped up to fill that void.
It wasn't as though there had never been drug dealers and addicts in South Stationary, but Pixis (and by proxy, the Stationary Guard) had offered a helping hand to those who needed it and raised a fist against those who profited off of misery. In the aftermath, nobody could have predicted the speed with which harder drugs entered the community and the breadth of their impact. With the old guard forced out, the new Stationary Guard saw its pockets lined thickly; what else was there to do when the jobs were scarce and the trauma of the collapse and Pixis' death fresh in everyone's minds.
It was only when the scope of the Guard's operations began to expand beyond South Stationary that the police began to care –the finger pointed at the residents of South Stationary as a whole.
Drug addicts and dealers.
Poor and dirty.
Immigrants who wouldn't assimilate.
A blight on their city.
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They didn't have a voice as the blows rained down and a simple phone call could bring in an empty paddy wagon that left full.
Conditions at the stationary factory deteriorated without Pixis to agitate and organize. Where there might have been purposeful and ordered resistance there was now pure chaos as the Stationary Guard withdrew its support. Where Pixis would have had Brzenska and Jarnach paying a visit to any major dealers with their fists at the ready, now they were allowed to flourish and grow their businesses and the police came down harder and harder.
Blades became irrelevant as the weight of shiny metal and gunpowder became common.
The alleys they used to take as shortcuts weren't safe and Eren remembered vividly the black eye he had received when he'd tried to ignore the wall of bodies that had stood in his way as he walked back from the grocery store.
Mikasa became his indispensable protector even as she hid her abilities. Hannes was there for them until he wasn't; their sole protector in the midst of a war they couldn't understand and could only hope to escape. And that was what burned and burdened him, that in the wake of a tragedy the world came together only to turn on itself like Ouroboros and to have the worst escape like some horrible cancer. It came to touch all of Shiganshina and it couldn't be tamed or contained as the world around them spiraled out of control and bled out beyond the city.
The Stationary Guard was the filth on the streets they used to clean.
They were the hands that broke rather than the ones that saved.
And it spiraled down and down until it was riot gear and service batons.
Tear gas and zip ties and it didn't matter if you were fifteen when you looked angry.
They had every reason to look angry.
Who could guard against their former guards?
Who dared stand up in full daylight in defiance?
How do you leave when there's nowhere to go?
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Maria Wall collapsed in fire.
In South Stationary a Phoenix rose.
But a bullet rang out.
And then it was war.
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In the passenger seat of Levi's car Eren slept fitfully, shifting repeatedly as his unconscious mind thumbed through his subconscious and dredged up painful memories of days spent inside as he and Mikasa waited for Hannes to return from the Guardsman's Pub smelling of the stale liquor he himself had given up after the collapse. Eren never asked if it was difficult to serve people what used to be his worst vice, but things changed and he changed in the wake of the collapse –everyone did. Hannes had never been a particularly prideful man, but Eren had wondered what it might be like to have to serve the people who he had mentored and then been pushed out by, to serve those who called themselves Guardsmen when they guarded nothing but themselves. There had been points where he'd wondered whether Hannes bore them any ill will or reserved it for the unknown kingpin who stood at the top of the hierarchy of this brave new world that South Stationary was now subject to.
Levi gave Eren a concerned look as he shivered and let out a small whimper, not waking up as he curled up tighter and tried to huddle closer to the makeshift pillow that was his coat. Levi took off his seatbelt for a minute in order to shrug off his own coat. A shiver ran through his own body as he threw his coat over Eren's sleeping form, watching as Eren pulled it tighter around himself, not waking as he did so.
Another shiver went through Levi.
He turned up the heat.
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If you want to re-read the other "The Fall of Shiganshina" chapters they are:
32: Collapse
34: Vaccine
46: Escape
There's also "News of the Collapse" which is chapter three of The ALYNA Asides which you can get to via my profile.