The small group trotted forward through the thick vegetation of the tropical island. This part looked to be way denser than any of the other sites here, so getting to their destination and back before dusk, was the only way, if they didn't want to get lost for the night.
"How far is it, again?" Jean asked with annoyance as he wiped the sweat off his face.
"I remember that we went in deep, so, pretty far" Armin responded, trying to keep up with the rest of the group.
"Hey Mikasa, how exactly did you spot it anyway?" Connie asked the oriental girl, trying to untangle himself from vines.
"I climbed up a tree and looked from there" Mikasa replied indifferently, as if it was obvious.
"Right" Eren added, trying hard to see anything beneath the thick line of trees "Armin?"
"Yes?" The bespectacled blonde replied.
"Would you be able to contact your dad if you had a radio?" The young chief asked.
Armin looked away, deep in thought.
"It depends where they are" then, he looked over to Eren "and where we are."
Jean looked up, trying to look at the sun.
"The sun is quite big, over here" he said.
"If only I had my sextant, we could determine the latitude" Armin spoke after a moment "but I left it at home… The size of the sun tells me that we must be close to the equator…"
Eren didn't really understand any of that. What he knew about, was that a radio was their only hope for calling any help.
"Let's go" he commanded, hurrying his companions "Mikasa, lead the way."
After a tiring march through the bushes, trees and otherworldly rock formations, the vegetation thinned out and they could finally see what they came here for.
A front part of a plane laid on a few broken trees, dangling from a cliff. Right under, sea was storming with waves covered in foam.
"So" Connie started, sporting a nervous smile "who goes first?"
"Me and Armin will go" Eren said as he took the first step.
"Wait!" His bespectacled friend stopped him.
"What is it?"
Armin turned around to point at the trees.
"Let's take a few vines from the forest" he said "they could potentially break, but if we don't have real ropes…"
"That's a great idea!"
"Yeah."
But the execution didn't come quite as smooth. Using a single vine sounded like a stretch, so the children tried to make a rope out of several. However, the vines here weren't particularly long and making a rope that held together was quite a difficult task.
Finally, they settled on tying doubled vines around each Eren and Armin. The opposite ends would be held by the rest, from a spot the closest to the edge they could reasonably stand in.
"Alright, everyone" the young chief spoke when they were ready.
Looking over at his blonde friend, he could see fear beneath those thick glasses. It was obvious that he wasn't made for the job, but out of all the children currently on this island, he was the only one who had ever used a radio before.
It was quite the story. Armin, just like Eren, came from a small village. Over there, life was very slow and peaceful. Sometimes, Eren's father would be called to visit a patient in a city, but as far as he was concerned, that was it. Armin's father, however, was in the navy. One day, he even took him over to see the ship he was serving on.
There were many interesting things to see there, but what wondered the bespectacled boy the most was the bridge. There, the engineers even let him transmit a message over to his friends in Shiganshina. For a greater part of the year, that was the biggest topic in the village and people would often ask him if he could pull that off again.
Eren walked onto the trees that were holding the part of the plane. Adrenaline filled his veins as he started taking more steps. Finally, he set his foot onto the metal.
This was the nose of the plane, so his hopes were up. He turned around and motioned for Armin to come along.
The blonde boy crouched on all fours and crawled onto the plane. When he looked up at Eren again, the young chief could tell that this place wasn't quite what the bespectacled blonde had envisioned for himself. Trying to lift his spirits up, Eren nodded at him in awe and slowly stumbled towards the front seats, belonging to the pilots.
When he finally got into the front cabin, he carelessly walked past the supposedly empty seat.
From there he turned around to call for Armin…
It took all of his willpower not to jump away in fear at the sight of a pilot, still sitting in his seat.
This wasn't the first time he had seen something like this. His father was a doctor, after all. Eren took a deep breath and looked closer.
The pilot was dressed in a simple, air force uniform. He was slumped in his seat, his safety belts still fastened.
Eren brought a hand over to check his pulse.
"Cold…" the boy muttered to himself, pinching the man's aorta "…there's a dead pilot still in his seat!"
"Really…?" Armin exclaimed in disbelief, before standing up and slowly strutting over to him.
It was clear to Eren that the bespectacled blonde had never seen a dead body before. His reaction was saying it loud and clear. The cringing to look away, the distaste on his face, the feeling of dread in his eyes…
"He's been dead for a few hours already" Eren said, bringing his hand over to the pilot's pouch.
Inside, he found a used, but nonetheless sharp bayonet.
"That's going to come in handy" he spoke while pocketing it, before turning around to check on his friend.
Armin was nervously working over the dashboard, trying to look if anything still worked.
"The radio has its own power" the bespectacled boy spoke "that's a good sign…"
Eren sighed at that. Seeing a dead body clearly startled his friend.
"Alright, I'll try to tune it in" Armin said nervously, grabbing the frequency knob.
A white noise disturbed the silence that the two boys were currently sharing.
"Maybe try to transmit a signal?" Eren suggested "es… an es…"
"An S.O.S." Armin corrected, still entranced by the radio "that's a good idea…"
The blonde took the transmitter and flipped a switch on a dashboard.
Nothing happened.
Neither did the diode on the transmitter light up, nor the radio emit any noise. The only thing that changed was the silence that fell over them, once more.
"The cable… no, the microphone must be broken…" Armin said, clearly distressed by the fact.
"So, we can't be heard?!" Eren exclaimed in panic.
"I didn't say that" the bespectacled boy replied "we could still possibly use the cables to transmit the signal in morse code… I think we can, at least…"
"Let's just listen in, for now" the young chief commanded, flipping the switch once again.
"GUYS!" The duo heard Connie from the cliff.
It was only then that they realized they overstressed the broken trees. As they looked at what the plane was holding on, they could see that roots were dangerously overextended and slowly, the ground holding them started to break and crumble from all the weight.
"Go over the frequencies!" Eren yelled at Armin.
This brought the paralyzed blonde out of his stupor, and he started hastily turning the knob.
"Nothing!" He cried out in panic, hearing that the white noise was as static as when they initially turned the radio on "I went over every frequency and literally nothing changed!"
"Can you…?!"
Then, the ground holding the trees in place finally gave in and the plane started to fall.
The makeshift rope around Eren's waist tightened as he felt his colleagues pull. As the plane fell down, he curled up, prepared to hit the wall of the cliff.
Thankfully, the trees were still there and instead of hitting stone, he bounced off the soft wood.
The rope held up…
The same couldn't be said about Armin's.
Something came over Eren, something he couldn't fully understand. In the blink of an eye, he grabbed his friend's hand.
"I got you!" The young chief exclaimed, as he firmly held the dangling blonde.
The bespectacled boy just closed his eyes in relief. This has been a long day already.
Eren looked at the sun as his friends started pulling them up. A lot has happened today. But soon, things would surely get better, right?
They had to…