Creation began on 08-03-23

Creation ended on 08-18-23

Attack on Titan

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It was against the order they were given, but Commander Erwin Smith made the decision for the Survey Corps to venture out into the land beyond Wall Maria for the final time, hoping to either find some Titans…or signs that life still existed beyond where Titans roamed. Even though nobody else died since the last few expeditions, it wouldn't be a successful survey if they didn't find anything of any significance to benefit the people. But as he led his soldiers down where they last encountered any Titans, he was unaware of the fact that someone was watching him and his soldiers from a distance. In actuality, it was two people that were watching the Survey Corps, and with different reasons for doing so.

In the guise of a small bird perched atop a branch, looking down at the group as they walked through the forest, Brother Correction wondered if today was the day that these young men and women would meet the people that would tell them some more of what they could expect. And from the confines of her bedroom, Historia watched and waited for the moment they would be enchanted by a revelation that would benefit the rest of the people behind the Walls.

Let peace be granted, thought Brother Correction.

Let people band together to form a community, thought Historia.

As they exited the forest on the other side, Captain Levi looked in front of the expedition…and saw the unbelievable.

"Is this real?" He asks.

Several meters away from the trees was a field that had been cleared for agriculture, arranged and organized for the cultivation of crops…and they could see some people working on them.

"It looks real," Hange Zoe expresses as she advances to the farmland, looking at one of the signs that marked what was being grown.

Erwin couldn't believe any of this! They had traveled almost half a day from Wall Maria, the furthest they had ever managed to get from the Walls, and this was here! There didn't seem to be any trace of the Titans. It was like…coming out of Hell and stepping onto a patch of Heaven.

-x-

Only one of the ships survived enough to bring them all back to the motherland, but Calvi was now among the dozen or so men that had been traumatized by what he had seen in the water. He'd been through Hell and back again many times in his service to the military, but those creatures that seemed to be the new guardians of Paradis…were something he had never encountered before…and hoped to never see again. The use of the Titan powers to conquer Marley's enemies had been questionable enough, but to see creatures that didn't resemble Titans at all was something else entirely and confusing because he couldn't understand how something, anything of the sort, could survive so long before being discovered and known to the world at large. It terrified him, knowing that as soon as these creatures are discovered, the rest of the world will try to kill them, only to learn that it might've been impossible to do so. He imagined a horde of them taking over the oceans of the world, devouring everything and keeping people from ever traveling again.

"Maybe they were asleep for millions of years and woke up recently," suggested one of the Eldians aboard the ship.

"…I think they were creatures from old myths that people spun generations ago, older than the Titans themselves…"

"…But there's no way they could have survived that long, could they?"

"…The Titans have survived for over two-thousand years, who's to say that these things couldn't have lived for longer?"

"…They've claimed the waters of that island as their hunting grounds, even…"

"…Please, don't make me go back there…"

Everyone, Eldian and Marleyan, was afraid to go back to Paradis in fear of being eaten by the creatures that lived in the water. More so of them than they had ever been of the Titans. And Calvi couldn't fault them for it; just seeing these monsters once was enough to scare brave people that claimed to be fearless, and most of these men were ones that had been drafted into war for the sake of their motherland…and were scarred by what they had seen or done.

"When we get back to the mainland," he decreed, "any and all travel to Paradis Island is restricted so long as those things are out there."

-x-

It was questionable beyond reasonable doubts, but the veteran members of the Survey Corps had to take into consideration that such had to be possible in this case because of what had been witnessed or committed. Several of the people from the village they had discovered had only been released from their lengthy enslavement as Titans for several weeks, gifted with these homes and the return of their lives by an unseen being that wanted them to resume where they originally left off because of either the last person they lived under the rulership of or these people from across the ocean that hated them. While dubious due to their isolation, neither Erwin, Levi or Hange could find any fault or reason to discredit the claims of these people. Not when they had learned some things that were significant and were a part of the goal that they had been tasked with achieving.

"Nine Titans every generation of holders," Hange utters, learning that there was a race of people that could turn into or be turned into Titans, particularly these Nine Titans that were capable of intelligence and possessing powers beyond what they currently understood about the Titans.

"The human race isn't extinct," Levi expressed, trying to comprehend that the belief that Titans didn't rule the world or that the human race was endangered, meaning that everything they used to understand about their predicament was nothing but lies.

"The king used the Founder's power to wipe away the memories of those living behind the Walls into believing that the world was ruined, the Titans were the cause, and wanted to kill us all slowly…because of his guilt over what his ancestors did," Erwin says, disappointed in why they had been forced to live within the confines of the Walls for something that wasn't their fault, but was something they could've changed over time. "Who undid what what happened to you?"

"A goddess," one of the farmers reveals. "We've never seen her, but she is clearly one trying to do right by us and protect us. Historia the Almighty One. She wants peace and coexistence between us all, not war or death."

"Historia the Almighty One?" Levi questions. "That sounds like something a child would say."

"Maybe," a female farmer responds, "but I'm grateful to her, whoever she is, for freeing my family from an eternity as Titans. You have no idea how awful it is."

"Can you describe your experience, please?" Hange wanted to know.

"It's like being asleep," a third farmer, male, states, "trapped for a long time in a cold, dark place. There's nobody else around you, and you're left wondering what you did, if anything, to deserve this darkness, this contempt. They say the only thing worse than being turned into a Titan…is being killed after being turned into a Titan. It's like being condemned to wander in the darkness forever as you make your way to Hell. But somehow, the goddess made that impossible to continue now. She made it so that we never have to be turned into Titans again. She set us free from that horrible fate. To become monsters against our will. She set us all free."

Hange then got the impression that if this…this goddess these people were indebted to had actually acted in the interest of peace, different from the peace this Karl Fritz orchestrated because he intended to have his people killed later on in the far future, then this person had to be a recent phenomenon. Whoever they were, they were likely the reason the Titans had disappeared, trying to protect the people. If they could meet this goddess, talk to them, try to learn more about what, if anything else, they were up to. Or better yet, just to talk to them and learn who they were and why they were acting up now. If the Titans were a thing of the past up to now, then it had to mean that these Nine Titans were also gone.

Historia the Almighty One, she thought, wondering what she looked like. Who are you?

-x-

"…What's that you have there, Historia?" One of her half-brothers asked the girl as she sat in the living room, holding onto a cube-like object.

"Oh, this?" She replies, showing him the object (A/N: Think of the puzzle box from the Hellraiser remake). "It's just a puzzle box. The only one of its kind."

Historia was using the box as an elaborate way to affect the world without attracting any unnecessary attention to herself. Each time she turned a piece, she was making small changes to Paradis' scenery, such as the trees and the mountains, and for now, pondering how to move forward with the goal to establish coexistence between the island and the rest of the world that could keep the people safe from an extermination tactic by other nations over a millennia-long hatred that nobody could recall or let go of. Her tinkering with the box also enabled her to see the progress of the Survey Corps as they were getting to know the community that had been built from the people that used to be the Titans roaming around the island and were trapped within the Walls, learning about what they could reveal that no longer matters because of her changes.

"Can I see it after you're done?" He asks her.

"I'm sorry, I promised Ymir that she could try it after I solve it," she reveals, gesturing to Ymir, who sat across from her in the room.

"Oh, let him try to solve the one after you," Ymir tells her. "I'm patient."

"Say, do you two know anything about the boy with the chicken baby?"

"What boy with the chicken baby?" Historia and Ymir both asked him.

"The boy from Shiganshina. The bad boy that was punished for being defiant towards the adults. Did he really have a chicken baby?"

"Eh-heh-heh!" Ymir snickered. "Oh, yeah, that boy. He didn't have a chicken baby. He just had a chicken come out of his bottom because he refused to apologize to the adults he was being defiant against."

"Do you suppose that hurt him?"

"He can still sit down, if that's what you mean," Historia told him. "He's just constantly reminded that he's the talk of Shiganshina due to being the cautionary tale for any kid that doesn't apologize for their misbehavior…and because he has to take the chicken with him wherever he goes."

"So, then…the chicken is like his baby."

The ladies looked at each other and sighed.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that," Ymir replied.

As Historia finished the puzzle in the time they were conversing, she had managed to create a former base of operations in the Titan Forest that was missed by the Survey Corps on their way to the farming village, install an underground lake beneath a mountain, reinforce the Walls and expand the territorial defensive boundaries of the kraken horde protecting Paradis from external forces that were trying to attack the people. The second she gave her half-brother the puzzle to play with, she had a messenger send a special gift to a former member of the Survey Corps by the name of Keith Shadis, hoping that once he got around to it, he would find that, despite his self-believed failures, he would find another way to prove that he was special to a cause and could achieve something that would earn him his place in a world that was changing.

"How do I solve it?" He asks her.

"You try to get the pieces to move," she explains, showing him the pieces that were capable of moving around. "If you can get the pieces to lock in place, you solve a part of it. Once it takes the shape of something else, you progress to the next level. There are six shapes it can take. This is the second shape."

The box went from a block to a shape the little boy wasn't familiar with.

"Wow," he expresses as he starts working on the box. "Will you let me know if I solve it?"

"Yes."

-x-

"Hmm?" Keith Shadis reacted to the sight of a small package of the table in his apartment. "What's this?"

He approached the table and picked up the package. There was a note written on it that read, "If everyone were special, we wouldn't have people who could prove themselves capable of doing anything important. If everyone is not special, then you can decide what you want to accomplish. You decide, Keith Shadis."

Someone sent him a package with some words of encouragement, but what was he to do? What did they want him to do? Opening the package, he found that it was…a book or journal. He opens it and reads the first page of what was written…and was immediately drawn into it as he sat down to read it.

-x-

The way back was delayed by the discovery of the abandoned base that was in the forest…and with a note left under a small chair that Hange found.

"What does it say, Zoe?" Levi asks her.

"It says…'I believe in people like you that can put an end to the suffering'," she tells them. "Either this is a joke or someone was expecting us to find this place again."

"Maybe it was the goddess that gave the former Titans that once wandered around or was stuck in the Walls," went Erwin, suggesting the possibility that the same person that gave these people back their lives was the same person that probably made it so that they would find this former base. "Who else could or would do this?"

"So, is this…Historia the Almighty One…is an ally?" One of the other corps members questioned whether this was the likelihood.

"Maybe," Levi responds, "but it could also mean that the Fritz royal family, the people that possessed this Founding Titan before it seems all the power of the Titans was taken away, has an enemy, and they are two different things."

"But even if this is so, you can't go against what any god decides; when they make a decision about anything, their say is the only say that matters," Erwin states, which was a truth none of them could go against.

If this was a case of divinity at work in the favor of Eldians and former Subjects of Ymir, nobody, not a monarch, a soldier, not even a Titan capable of speech could go against the powers that be.

-x-

He might've had a straight face to the public and his grandparents, but Zeke was fuming like crazy inside his mind. All travel to Paradis was prohibited because of some sort of creatures that were able to wreck some ships. At first, he wanted to believe that these were just Titans under the control of the Founding Titan, but then he heard about the tentacles and how they were likely larger than the Colossal Titan itself… There was no way anyone from Marley was going to be able to get to Paradis unless they had a death wish, meaning Zeke's own plan was for naught without access to the Founding Titan. It was all over before anything could even get started.

If there is a God, he thought as he looked out at the ocean in the direction of where Paradis was located, he really does hate us.

"Oh, please!" He heard a man sitting on the edge of the pier away from him. "There's more than one god, but the one you're thinking about…isn't capable of hatred."

The man turned to face him and Zeke was a little bothered by his appearance. It wasn't so much his face or skin tone as it was his eyes. He felt like they were looking into his soul. And there was this sense of intimidation and repressed rage.

"The only ones capable of hatred, young man," he told Zeke, "are people who are capable of anything they choose, which includes the possibility of taking the lives of others. In a world where there is good and evil, how can you justify your actions when you are the one that chooses to commit the most decadent of human evil? How can you claim to want to do good…when everything you do contradicts everything you say? The hard answer is that you can't. You can't. Not unless you seek redemption like others can when they choose to stop going down the path they're on and seek absolution."

Zeke wasn't sure whether to respond to him or to be weary of him.

"Walk away from your self-loathing and accept the future that is full of promise and hope…or suffer in misery pining for what you can never achieve. The choice is yours."

Then, the man scooted off the pier and into the water. Oddly, though, there was no splash.

Zeke ran over to where the man had sat, but there was no indication that he had been around. He couldn't see any signs that he was even in the water; it was calm and shallow.

To be continued…

A/N: The more Historia changes things, the more the rest of the world is in for a shocking surprise when all is said and done. What do you expect to see happen later?