Creation began on 11-29-23

Creation ended on 12-03-23

Attack on Titan

Darkness in Broad Daylight

Unfortunately, a rowboat was required due to not wanting to alert the people of Paradis that there were outsiders coming to their island. However, it appeared that their dockyards were in disservice; not a single pier looked like it had been in use for years after the Rumbling. Not a single boat present seemed sturdy enough to travel in, and there were only eight of them. It was a grim sight to behold if you were visiting the island…or worse, you lived on the island.

"Wow," went Shinji as he helped row the boat towards a pier. "So much for the semblance of a welcome party."

"Yeah, from what I heard," the other guy rowing the boat said, "even after the Rumbling ended, relations between Paradis and the world didn't get any better. Even after Eren Yeager was killed, nobody wanted much of anything to do with this island. So they cut off all ties. Even those that were once allies of Paradis cut their losses with them. Then, there was the local gossip years later on how life on the island drove a bunch of its own people to abandon it because of the new government supporting the rule of the Yeagerists."

"That was over thirty years ago," Kaede expresses. "I was a baby around that my parents up and left Paradis, unable to accept the reality that the island they once saw as their home was no longer the place they recognized."

"On the island or at sea?"

"Huh?"

"Were you born on the island…or born at sea?" The man clarified.

"The island. I was less than a month old when we left with some other people. We took whatever we could and didn't look back."

"So 'fight or die' wasn't even a choice back then for you. I mean no disrespect, but it must feel bad to come home again after so many years in exile."

"Paradis may be the land of my birth, but it has not felt like my home in a long time. And if these two choices are the only choices I'm given, then I will forge my own choice and take that over all others."

The man smiled as he continued to row on his side of the boat.

"I'll say this, though. You got guts. More guts than I can tell."

"Thank you."

They reached a pier and Shinji threw a looped rope onto a mooring, securing the boat.

Kaede set foot on the grounds of the island for the first time since she was alive…and already felt no joy at being here at all. It was like…she could hear the whispers of people screaming, crying, begging for an absolution that would never come. And all around her was this feeling of dread that felt like a toxic cloud she was suffocating inside of. Her heart felt heavy, with every beat like a knife twisting inside her.

"Kaede?" She heard Shinji's voice.

"Hmm?" She reacted, feeling a little better after seeing him.

"You don't feel comfortable being here, do you?" He asks her.

"It just feels…like the people that used to live here…aren't pleased with the people that do live here. It's like the island's poisoned or something, and every breath I take is full of spite."

"Well…let's hope that we won't have to be here longer than necessary to do what we're here to do. The sooner we find Sumairu and her friends, along with anyone else that shouldn't be here, we get them…and walk away."

"You make it sound so easy, Shinji."

"I wish it was easy. But I've never been here before. All I've ever heard about this island is that it's the worst place to visit for any reason. I hope that if we meet anyone here, they are not as incorrigible as some people believe."

"Incorrigible? That's not a word I heard you say before."

Unfortunately, the pair would have to go alone; the people on the boat would get them to Paradis, but they would not stay so close to the island due to its sour history with the rest of the world. They would have only a week to find the missing people and rescue them with their return aid, but if they missed their window, they would be up a creek.

"So, we used to live on an island, Daddy?" Kaede remembers asking her parents when she was little, curious about why they didn't live on Paradis at the time. "Why don't we live there now?"

"Because of the government that controls the island, sweetie," her father told her. "Several years ago, before you were born, a man from Paradis did a terrible thing, and it made the people beyond the island angry."

"A…a terrible thing?"

"Oh, you're too young to understand the whole story, Kaede," her mother explained. "He unleashed a horrible army of monsters…and ruined most of the world. That's why we're building this town for ourselves and others. The official story after the end of it all was that the people of Paradis supported the foundation of the new government owned by the Yeagerists, but unofficially, not everyone supported them. Roughly, only eighty percent of the people actually supported the new military, leaving the remaining twenty at odds with the rest of Paradis. Your father and I were among the twenty percent; we didn't support the Yeagerists or the queen. We knew that if we stayed on that island, nothing would get better for us, so we made our choice to abandon the island. We took what we could carry and boarded a boat…and we never looked back. Even if such a good thing came out of so much bad, it's wrong to destroy the world for a belief that will never be possible the way you want it to be. Even if we're accepted by the people that remain one day, the people left on Paradis…so long as they continue to fight for an ideal that isn't true, drafting people into their ranks to fight for the ideal…will not be forgiven for what that one man did."

"That…really is terrible," Kaede expressed her opinion over the history of why the people that left Paradis were building a coastal town for themselves to live in and why they were at odds with those left behind that chose to stay. "But why didn't anyone stop the man from doing what he did? Why didn't the queen do anything?"

Her parents had explained that the queen was a friend of the man, meaning that she had enabled him, let him do what he did, because deep down…she lacked the power to keep him in check.

Eren Yeager, she thought; the only history she knew about him was that he was the cause of the Rumbling…and was killed by the so-called heroes that put an end to the Rumbling, but not before eighty percent of the world was ruined, so their victory was hollow. The instigator of the carnage. The Global Butcher of Paradis. Some say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but what good were any of your intentions? And if your Yeagerists have taken my sister and harmed her any further, you better pray for whatever's left of your soul…if you can pray at all. And your friends? If any are left alive after all these years, pray I don't meet any of them, either.

Most of them are dead, she heard the Dark Titan say to her. There's only one left…and he's just a shell of his former self. Nothing more than a failure.

-x-

Armin wouldn't lie, but he hated his prognosis after he saw his doctor last week. He wasn't sick, just dying; his heart and liver were failing him and his legs were starting to feel weak. It had been a miracle that he had lived this long after the Rumbling. It was also a miracle that he had lived after that night more than thirty years ago when some people had chosen to leave Paradis due to the minority losing faith in the government and Historia. He only knew about the abandonment because he was present that night when he saw several disgraced members of the nobility walking down one of the disused paths leading to the coastal docks. They knew who he was and were afraid he'd alert the Yeagerists to their unsanctioned departure…but he told them to go, to get away from Paradis; if they lost their faith, it was only the logical choice to reject the beliefs and leave the place that was no longer the home they recognized after so many years.

That woman holding the baby, he thought as he walked down a dungeon staircase. It must've been at least half a day for her, and she was walking with all that she had to get her family away from the Yeagerists. Did she make it? Is she even alive today?

Unfortunately, the Yeagerists that were out that night were not happy to know that he had seen the people leaving and did nothing to stop them.

"If you believe so much in freedom, then why shouldn't they be free to leave if they no longer believe in the government that has been demolished and rebuilt to support you?" He asked them, bringing up a strong point. "If they don't support the Yeagerists, it's only right for them to leave Paradis and go somewhere else."

"And if they leave, they can make up any reason they want to in order to explain why they left!" One of the Yeagerists insisted.

"Their reasons for leaving are their own! I don't blame them for wanting to leave! You may have the support of the majority of the island, but that doesn't mean that you can get the minority to support you if they have lost their faith. Frankly, I have lost my faith, too."

And it was true, he did lose his faith. He was the last leader of the Survey Corps…and it died with him when the Yeagerists took over the island. As the world was destroyed, there was no longer any need for the group, and their Wings of Freedom symbol was forever tarnished by its use by the Yeagerists. In his mind, the new symbol was more like the Armed Wings of Oppression, brandished by men and women that took control and thought they were protecting their home against a retaliatory invasion from the remnants of the ruined world, but the retaliation never came. It never came because nobody left wanted anything to do with Paradis, for better or for worse.

He walked down a corridor of prison cells, seeing several people chained to the ground, many of whom were just young people, barely out of their teens. Stopping in front of one cell, he looked down at a young girl with gray hair. She looked up at him and frowned.

"What do you want?" She asks him.

"You're not from Paradis, are you?" He asks her back.

"Never once came to this place until your friends brought me and my friends, along with other people, here against their will."

"The Yeagerists…are not my friends."

"Then your comrades."

"No. Not friends, not comrades, not even family. They're nothing to me."

The girl looks at him.

"Again, what do you want?" She asks again.

"To know who you are…and why your hair is gray," he answers her.

"Everyone on my father's side have gray hair. It's a hereditary thing. Maybe my kids will inherit the same thing…if I ever have any."

Armin looks further down the corridor and sees a soldier asleep in a chair, a rifle at his side.

"Hold on a minute," he tells her as he walks away from her cell.

She didn't hear much, except for a mild struggle and a thud. And then saw him come back, using the rifle as a support as he looked like he was having difficulty walking on his legs, holding a set of keys.

"How many of you are there?" Armin asks her.

"Why do you want to know that?" She responds.

"I'm dying. I might as well die knowing that I helped some people that don't want to be here get away while I'm still alive."

"Won't they kill you?"

"It doesn't matter, anymore. My life is empty. Everyone I knew is gone. This is just my last act of defiance."

He unlocked the cell door and entered to unhook her chains. It was a struggle for him just to hold up the keys to undo her legs.

"My name is Armin Arlert," he introduced himself. "Who are you?"

He dropped the keys…and she caught them.

"Sumairu," she answers him. "Sumairu Sogen, and there are thirty-seven of us."

"Then I have thirty-seven reasons to do this," he tells her.

-x-

Walking down the tracks leading inward towards wherever they led to on the opposite end was a quiet time for Kaede and Shinji. Neither knew much about anything of this island…except from the past history they learned from the museum when looking around the information gathered, but their past knowledge would probably lead them nowhere in the here and now, because Paradis had been cut off from the rest of the world by the people that wanted nothing more to do with it, its people or resources. No matter what they wanted to say to each other right now, it would feel awkward to say anything, whether it was a question or answer. But the silence between them was terrible; they wanted to hear the other one talk so badly.

Just say something to him, Kaede heard the Dark Titan say to her. Conversations can only begin when the first word is spoken.

She sighs and stops Shinji by placing her left hand on his right shoulder.

"Can I be honest with you about something, Shinji?" She asks him.

"Yes," he answers her.

"I really didn't think this through before we got here; my focus was on finding Sumairu. I don't have a strategy for how to deal with the Yeagerists if we encounter any."

Shinji sighs and replies, "Neither of us have a plan of recourse, Kaede. All I know is that I'd follow you to Hell and back again. And if anything happens to either of you, come Hell or war, I'll spill my blood and that of another person, bad or foolish to stand in my way, before I lose my life at the end of it all."

"That…makes you sound like you're not expecting to walk away from this."

"If I lose the people I love, what other reason is there for me to live?"

"Maybe we should've made a plan to discuss whatever future we have together."

"Any future with you in it is a future I can live with, no matter how small it may seem."

"You…are easy to put up with, Shinji."

"And you're the best person in my life in Epilogés."

There's no need for a plan, Kaede heard the Dark Titan say to her. I am the plan.

"The Dark Titan just told me that she is the plan," she tells Shinji.

"She? So, the Dark Titan is a female?"

"Anyone's identity can be based on something we can only interpret from our own perspectives. Since I can become the Dark Titan, the Dark Titan must be considered female. If it had been a man, then the Dark Titan would be male."

"Very perceptive."

"And only due to what I was able to comprehend, it's likely that she has abilities similar to the Titans that had existed over a century ago."

"The Nine Titans?"

"More like seven out of the nine. Hold on a second. She just told me something new. It's more like having the positives of what they were capable of, minus the negatives of what they caused to happen to the people that used to possess them. Apparently, knowledge of predetermined events or recollections of history are not included in the Dark Titan's skill set."

"Knowledge of predetermined events? Recollections of history?"

"Put quite simply, knowing of the future before it happens…and the secondary knowledge of history is the entire history, including the future. Nobody is allowed to possess such knowledge. The past and future must exist beyond our reach within the here and now. To act on knowledge of events before they even occur were what made the Attack Titan a rogue element that didn't have the best interests of the fallen nation of Eldia at heart…and knowing all of history, including what was to come and what had transpired in the past, that was a power that made the Founding Titan next to useless in safeguarding any future worth having. So…there's no knowledge of the future, no knowledge of anything besides what we already know of from our own points of view, and no control over anyone connected to the past that involved Eldians or former Subjects of Ymir Fritz. There's just…what I have yet to discover."

Shinji stopped her and hugged her closely.

"It's better if we don't know of our fates before they happen," he tells her. "Whatever happens, we try to defy it as best as we can. I cannot, will not, flee from this and leave you behind."

Kaede smiles and holds him.

"We're a terrible pair," she tells him.

"Yeah, the worst."

-x-

Leaving Shiganshina wasn't easy. Not when there were Yeagerists all over the place, which meant that Armin had to lead the freed captives out through back alleyways to avoid being discovered and apprehended a second time. It was harder on Armin due to his advanced age. Fortunately, he had Sumairu and her friends to help him a little.

"So, where are we going?" She asks Armin as they were walking down a dirt road in the night, holding only two lights.

"There's a village not far from here that's a little independent of the rest of the island," he explains. "It's called New Rückzahlung."

"I know that word, 'rückzahlung'," went Sarah. "It's a word meaning 'redemption'."

"It's watched over by some young people that had a change of heart."

"For how long?" Matthew questions.

"Eight years. Eight long years. That's the longest time anyone has ever had since developing a change of heart when ordered to do things that were questionable."

Sumairu stops walking and looks at Armin.

"Tell me, Armin Arlert," she says, her tone one of concern, "these young people that you say had a change of heart… They were Yeagerists, weren't they?"

Everyone else on the path stopped walking and looked at the elderly man with fear.

Armin looks at Sumairu and responds, "Yes…but not by choice. Fighting just to live…didn't sit well with them. And when faced with an order that was not what they were expecting, a line was drawn…and feelings were made known in an instant…and a new group was formed."

"Are they friends of yours…or do we need to be concerned?" She wants to know.

"The Yeagerists already know about them, but they stay away from the village out of fear; it's a common sense that things won't go in anyone's favor if people that used to be expected to fight on the same side were to engage in conflict over a sense of idealism and who's right or wrong. Neither side wants to give up, but neither side wants a massacre. So the Yeagerists stay away from the village…and the Anti-Yeagerists protect the people of the village, letting them live as freely as they can."

It was a surprise to hear of this. To know that a group of young people had…turned away from the people that tried to enforce an ideal that didn't work for them… And that this group now watches over a village that lived separated from the rest of the island. None of them expected to hear of this, especially not from a failed ambassador that was dying now.

Resuming the walk, Sumairu looked down at the road ahead of them.

"I hope they take kindly to a bunch of outsiders," she tells Armin.

"You don't support the Yeagerists," he told her. "That's going to matter more than you think."

-x-

"Where are they?!" A male Yeagerist demanded to the one that had recovered from being knocked out by an elderly man, looking at the empty prison cells around them.

"An old man came and let them out!" He informed.

"And you let him take them?!"

"It was that traitor! That disgraced leader of the Survey Corps!"

"Why would he do this?" A female Yeagerist questions. "He should know there are consequences for releasing enemy prisoners."

"I don't know why he'd do this," the incapacitated Yeagerist expressed, "but if he's got them, he's probably going to try getting them off the island."

"Once a traitor, always a traitor."

To be continued…

A/N: New ideas are a random moment lost throughout time and imagination. Even no plan but making up things as you go is still a plan than not a plan. So, what is to be expected from a group that has yet to be encountered? And what is to be expected from a woman that has barely any skill in the power she now possesses?