Creation began on 09-06-23

Creation ended on 09-25-23

Attack on Titan

Attack on Paradis: Maybe there is Hope

Everywhere she looked, there was nothing but scorched earth, ruins, and death, but she continued to wander around, looking for whatever she could find, managing to find some tattered-but-still-wearable clothing comprised of some trousers and a shawl. It was like this place, wherever she was, had been the victim of an immense war that left nothing to indicate that anyplace had ever been around previously. But a considerable distance from where she was walking, a giant creature stood motionless, like a dark towering monolith put in place for all to see and dread. Oh, how she felt a measure of concern whether or not it would start to move in her direction the moment she let her guard down.

Just what is it? She wonders as she continues to move away from where it stood.

The creature never moved, not even to acknowledge the young woman's presence. It was resting for when it would resume its goal to punish the descendants of the people responsible for killing its kind and maiming it to the point of nearly killing it and forcing it to flee. When its strength returned, it would burn the rest of the land until there was nothing left.

-x-

"…All we could see was scorched earth as far as the eye could see, sir," said the current leader of the Military Police, reporting on what they could on the disastrous phenomenon that occurred more than three days ago after the fires died down. "As best as we can indicate, everything of Walls Maria and Rose were burned to the ground."

"Is there any chance that there are survivors?" Rod Reiss questions.

"If there are, we don't know if we'll be able to find them," another member of the Military Police expresses; he felt that everything behind Wall Sina was fortunate enough to have survived this strange storm of death and destruction.

This was like a nightmare for them. They had expected attacks from the Titans in the future, but never something like this that felt like a natural disaster of some kind. Nothing about this made any sense to any of them, and with information being scarce and resources limited, people were afraid of whatever caused this. A foreign power or some cult that was genocidal. It never occurred once to them that a creature could do something of this magnitude due to having no knowledge of its existence.

It was also an adjustment period for those who once lived in the districts or villages within Walls Maria and Rose, having survived only because they weren't there when it happened. Everyone they knew and everything they had, gone in an instant and themselves not knowing why. There was no way to make sense of this. No words of solace that could make the pain go away. Whatever thoughts they had of going home again…were just old dreams that could never be realized again.

-x-

Across the ocean and in the land of Marley, people were looking for answers as to why one night ago, the sky was red as though it were lit on fire in the direction of where Paradis resided, and the military was wondering what, if anything, it could've done to compromise their operation to take the island for its resources.

"Could it have been the Colossal Titan?" A Marleyan soldier questioned the chain of command.

"Not possible," went General Calvi. "The Colossal Titan demonstrates explosive transformations and powerful steam emissions that make it dangerous to get near, but it could only do them once every few days due to its high energy consumption. A night sky turning red would indicate that a large swath of land had been set ablaze. A fire like that could spread for hours, burning everything in its path until there's nothing left to burn."

"A firestorm?" Another soldier asks.

"Yes."

The soldiers and leaders were finding it difficult to comprehend how a firestorm could happen on Paradis due to the people there being isolated behind three walls and unable to go anywhere because of the Titans wandering around outside their land. Any other possibility seemed unlikely due to their lack of knowledge of the past because of Eldia's destructive nature over a century ago. The fear of the Titans had been so intense that the thought of other creatures was a fantasy buried deep in the depths of people's fears that would never come true. Even if it had only been for one day, the sight of something that was not a Titan would have been enough to make people believe it was possible for them to face some other kind of potential threat.

"We need to go to Paradis to ascertain the status of the Warriors we sent over to take the Founding Titan," said Theo Magath.

"If it's still there," Calvi states.

-x-

Frieda came by to see her again, just to make sure she was okay. The mere thought of her not being there was a nightmare she didn't want to experience at all. That and the fact that all she did once see coming was now a dream compared to what was now going to come later on. The beast of vengeance that not even the Titans could stand against due to its strength returning and their own power divided. But she could stop being manipulated by the influence of their ancestor now; after the night two of the three Walls were destroyed, somehow, the ideology of Karl Fritz just…ceased to be. There was no sight of the Rumbling, no world losing the majority of its population because of the Wall Titans, not even a young man driven by a longing to be free from life behind the Walls to the point of becoming a soulless monster.

He was gone. The majority of the people he would ever meet in his life were gone. The dream he desired to make a reality would never come to pass. At least not in the way that he sought or had been driven to make happen, which meant it had to be done in a different manner than what had been seen originally by her. But now…she was free of those bindings, free of those dreadful feelings of guilt and regret, able to make her own decisions for the betterment of those that remained on Paradis.

But there was still something she could see that was guaranteed to come to pass: She saw Historia, standing before a vast ocean as the sun set, accompanied by another woman with freckles on her tanned face. Who this other woman was, she was unsure, but Frieda didn't see her as a threat. No, instead of a threat or some sort of hazard…she saw the woman as a friend to her sister, something she needed during a time of difficulty in this new future that had been carved through flesh and stone by the beast of vengeance that had returned. In the end, that was as much as she could see for now.

"Hello," Historia greets her, smiling, and Frieda knew she couldn't keep letting her live under these lies that were meant to protect her when they were really condemning her.

"Hello, Historia," she replied, and let the memories she had locked away in her sister return so that they could have a conversation that was necessary now that things had changed.

-x-

Sometimes, it could recall the past that was of a simpler time. When the water was calm and the air was crisp. It was a time when it knew only the serenity of its environment and the company of its kind. Those were times when none of them had any concerns about any dangers because they were never threatened by external forces. But as it continued to recoup and recover its strength, those memories were shifting to the time the enemies came and destroyed their home…and maimed their lives.

The giant that was made of bone and muscle, releasing burning air that boiled the waters to the point where they had to flee, but then three other giants, lesser than the largest one, attacked them and ripped them to shreds with their claws. Only it was fortunate to escape, hurt, on the verge of dying from its wounds, and desiring vengeance against these people for their sins against it and its kind. It found shelter in the frozen depths of where the enemies dared not to venture…and found strength in the energy left there. Slumbering for a long time, it regained considerable power…and regained just enough to make its first comeback against the people that wronged it.

In its slumber, it dreamt of its past, but in the present were the fiends it had to punish for their arrogance so that they would never do this to anyone else ever again. It believed in the great beast that was responsible for making all that was and all that could be, but that beast wasn't responsible for these creatures that spread like a plague upon the planet. No, they were the result of another beast that dealt with causing all manner of vileness…and they needed to be dealt with severely to ensure the planet could heal from their mistakes caused by existing. In a few more days, it will have regained enough strength to move on.

-x-

"…My God," a soldier expresses as the Marleyan ship reached the docking point on Paradis. "The whole dock is burnt."

One of the involuntary Eldians aboard was made to test the structural integrity of the dock…and confirmed that the whole structure was unstable, meaning they had to dock at sea and move in by smaller boats. Each step he took made the dock crack further in instability.

"Not even the Colossal Titan could damage this place with its steam emissions," another Marleyan soldier utters as the ship moves away from the ruined dock. "This was done by something else."

"Something else?" Another Eldian involuntary member speaks up. "What else could do that to the dock?"

"Probably the same something that did that?" The soldier states, pointing to the land behind the wall where previous Eldians were turned into Titans.

Everything was burnt and covered in ashes. If anything, the sand had been superheated to the point of being turned into glass and the soil nearby scorched to the point of being devoid of any capacity for nourishing life in the form of even the simplest weeds. It was as though someone unleashed the wrath of Hell onto this place.

"Is that a Titan over there?" A Marleyan soldier asks, pointing to something close by on the scorched ground, enlarged and burnt.

"Yeah, a four-meter one," another soldier responds.

With little alternative, the boat docked away from the island and a handful of soldiers, Marleyan and Eldian, got into a rowboat and got close enough to the shoreline to investigate.

"I recognize this Titan," one of the Marleyans state. "It was a florist that was accused of trying to sneak out of the internment zone eight years ago."

"Well, this one can't move with its limbs being so tiny. Hard to imagine that it could move any more than a few feet or inches per day." Another of them expresses, and then the Titan crumbles in front of them. "Oh, Hell!"

It just fell to pieces. There was no evaporation, no screams, nothing. It was as though it had been dead long before they ever arrived. This made the men more uncomfortable with what happened here on the island.

-x-

Try as he might to see what caused this, Grisha was at a loss over the future. As he was among the volunteers that went out past Wall Sina to explore and assess the devastation that occurred just a few days ago, he was unable to see anything because the person that was set to inherit the Attack Titan after him was no longer around. From what he could recall and was told by his predecessor, Eren Kruger, the Attack Titan could receive the memories of those that had yet to possess it, sending their memories of events yet to transpire to the people that already have it and act upon them. But based on this new predicament, it appeared that if the people that were yet to possess it were no longer among the living, then the future changes to the point of being nonexistent…or until a new holder was chosen.

Except that's not how the Attack Titan has been passed down over the generations, he thinks as he sees all that remains of a forest known for its large trees, reduced to nothing more than tall, burnt sticks. No future possessors meant to have it means no future to act on. If there's no future to act on, then there's no freedom to fight for. The Attack Titan only fights to move forward, fighting for the sake of freedom. But what is there to fight?

"Oh, God," he heard another volunteer gasp, and he saw what they were looking at, seeing a burnt corpse of a person cradling a small bundle in their arms. "This is madness."

"Was it a fire that got out of hand that did all of this?" Another volunteer questions.

"It can't be," responds a female volunteer. "The fire would've had to have been enormous and that requires a lot of whatever is combustible. It's as if…someone just lit a match after dousing everything in something flammable…and watched as it all burned away."

"I…I can't take it, anymore," another female volunteer utters, finding another series of charred corpses. "This is Hell."

Grisha was one to believe her choice of words. No matter which direction they turned to look, there was nothing but death and destruction. If there were survivors, even just one, they'd be out of their reach, probably near death themselves.

Even if it's only one out there, he found himself thinking, that would be enough to give some sense of hope. That someone made it out alive. Someone, anyone.

"Hey," went one of the male volunteers, pointing out at the distance. "There's someone out there in the south!"

"What?!" Some of the other volunteers gasped, looking to where he pointed.

Grisha looked. It was far out…but through the destruction of the land…was some speck of hope. Yes, there was. It was a person! They were walking towards them!

-x-

She was shocked to see some people away from the wall that she walked towards, having walked past two of them that had been destroyed reduced to rubble, but she hoped there would be some people behind this one. As she heard once in her past, the third time was the charm. And at first you don't succeed, you must try, try again. She brought up her left hand as a sign of greeting…and then both hands as a sign of being harmless.

"Hello there," one of the men greeted her as they came over.

"Are you from Wall Rose or Wall Maria?" A woman asks her.

"Are there other survivors?" Another woman questions.

"What happened out there?" Another man says.

These were questions that were thrown at her, and they didn't even know who she was. And then a man with glasses came over and offered her a pouch of water; she hadn't had a drink in quite some time, and she accepted it.

"Apologies," he expresses. "You're the first person we've seen since we ventured out of Wall Sina to search for survivors, and we don't know what happened to cause the land beyond to become engulfed in fire. If there's anything you can tell us, we'd be grateful."

She nodded her head in the positive and looked back where she came from.

"There was a…creature standing where a wall once stood," she utters.

"Was it a Titan?" He asks her.

"It didn't look like a Titan. It looked like a monster. Massive and dark, like the land around it. I could only hope that it wouldn't move and come after me."

"Could you describe this monster if we needed more clarification, information on what it looked like?" Another man says to her.

"Yes," she answers.

"Were there…any other people you saw coming here?" The man with the glasses that offered her water asks her. "Any other survivors. Any at all?"

"I…couldn't find anyone else out there, sir. There was nobody else alive in the direction I came from. I was the only one."

He looked like a man that had lost something that mattered to him. She could sympathize with him to a degree; she lost everyone that had looked up to her, lost her life and sense of purpose…until an act of chance saw fit to restore her to life. But even with her life, she had nothing for herself; no friends, no family, no home, nothing. She may as well be dead.

"…A monster," she heard him say, as if in disbelief. "I pray we never see it."

"Me, too," she found herself agreeing with him.

To be continued…

A/N: So, even though it's only Ymir that they found, it was meant to give the people of Wall Sina a sense of hope that they could reclaim the land beyond the wall, but they will still have to deal with Godzilla and Marley's soldiers later on. The sense of an unseeable future stems from events unseen by any of the Titan Shifters happening and destroying what they thought they knew and leaving it open to some other form of interpretation. They can no longer rely on what they do understand and have to make it all up on their own as they try to adjust to their current reality. Still, what do you think so far?