Creation began on 08-16-22
Creation ended on 01-17-24
Attack on Titan
The Pale One: A Ghost among Mortals
Grisha Yeager was at a loss of words toward Pēruwan when he examined his body. It wasn't that he wasn't in one piece…but more to the fact that this young man's body was just…unusual in its appearance. He couldn't give him a clean bill of health because of his history of healed injuries and pale skin tone, but was able to deduce that he wasn't in any danger or was a danger to the people he was seen with. But there was something about his eyes, his pale, dark eyes…that seemed almost as though he was able to see deep into people, into their souls.
"Do any of you know anything about this man?" He asked the men and women that were with him in the village.
"He gathered us together when we were escaping from the Titans," one of the women explained as she held her son in her arms. "He has been through a lot ever since before we met."
"We think he's a fighter," added an elderly man. "There was a man that tried to attack us as we were forced to run for our lives, and he was able to kill him before he could kill me."
It didn't seem like much of a story, but as they were being vouched for by the other adults and children with them, Grisha decided to accept their claim that Pēruwan was somewhat of a fighter. The healed scars, including the ones on his back near his heart, seemed to speak for themselves in that regard.
"A few days of rest and they should all be fine," he told the villagers. "Did this…Pēruwan say anything when he arrived with them? Anything at all?"
"When he lost consciousness, he did say something for a while," a man that had examined Pēruwan earlier revealed. "It was something about…four beings and one path to before. Maybe he was dreaming about something."
"Doctor Yeager," another man spoke, "are you sure there's nothing wrong with him? I mean, he's… His skin is pale. Too pale, like he's…"
"Dead," Grisha cut him off; he had checked his pulse and confirmed that his heart was beating, meaning he was alive. "That may be the only thing off with him, along with his scars, but beyond that, he's not in any danger or a danger to others right now. Just rest and food, and he should be up on his feet in no time."
-x-
Pēruwan awoke to the next day, feeling a little better from before the last time he was awake, and looked to his right side of where he lay, seeing a cup of water and something that looked like a bar of bread. He got up to a sitting position and grabbed the cup to drink its contents before he picked up the bar.
"You're finally awake," he heard a woman's voice and looked over to see one with an apron and basket of fruits. "How are you feeling?"
"Just a little more dead…and a little more alive at the same time," he answered her. "That probably doesn't make any sense to someone like you, does it?"
"No. You look like you're… Well, you look like you're someone that's been through some trauma that goes beyond a few fights."
"You wouldn't be wrong about that. For some, to live is to fight, but for a rare few, to fight is to ensure that others may live to pursue their own lives…so that they don't have to fight."
"So…you're a fighter?"
"Yes…and no. I'm…I'm an outsider, an outcast, even among the outcasts. I have no place to call my home, so I wander around as often as I can, doing whatever is necessary to survive."
"How long have you been living this way?"
"For as long as I can remember?"
"What happened to your family?"
"Taken by monsters."
That was the most apt way for Pēruwan to explain his lack of familial ties. Because monsters were more than just creatures that frightened people, it enabled him to address the people that murdered his past as the monsters that helped threaten the future in the present.
"The Titans?" The woman asked.
"No. But it might as well have been them. It may as well have been wolves, demons, mediocre pigeons. But it was a lifetime ago. I can't remember what they even looked like." He revealed to her, and then took a bite out of the bar.
He lost most of his sense of taste over the years of being the Horseman of Death, just another negative for one in his position, but there was just enough tastebuds left to let him know that this food bar was not as bad as it looked.
"So…just how old are you?" He was asked by the woman as he cleared his mouth.
"Seventeen, maybe," he revealed, "or nineteen…probably."
"You…you don't know?"
"Nobody except the gods know anything about someone that doesn't know much of anything about themselves. What does anyone do around here?"
-x-
"…The guy was pale?" Eren asked his father when Grisha returned from the village. "How so?"
"He looked as though he passed away a long time ago," Grisha explained to his son. "But other than his skin discoloration, he was alive, just exhausted and malnourished."
"Did he have scars? Maybe that's why he looked the way he did."
"He had plenty of scars, but they happened at different intervals in his life. He had to be at least in his late-teens."
"Who was he?"
"One of the people with him at the time said his name is…Pēruwan."
"Per…paru…han?"
"Close enough. I've never heard of a name like that before. And based off his facial features, he must be from a village that was very far away."
-x-
"…We didn't look in your bag while you were resting," a male villager told Pēruwan as he opened his bag of personal belongings in a different structure of the village. "Several of the people you were with said that you were a…private person and… Ooh."
Pēruwan held up a small blade with a cord of rope tied on the end of the handle. He pulled out the other end of the rope and held up another small blade. Setting the weapon aside, he rummaged through the bag and pulled out another strange weapon, a shaft-like handle with a curved blade (a kama), followed by a small number of blades similar to the two tied together with rope.
"I've never seen such weapons like those before," the man said. "Are you some sort of soldier?"
"No," he replied. "I just walk the thin line between this world and the next. Tell me…does this village have a forge?"
"A forge?"
"Where you craft metal?"
"No. All metalwork is usually performed in the districts of Wall Rose."
"Wall Rose… Which way is Wall Rose?"
"Further inward, but it'll take days to get to, unless you have a horse."
"Are there…horses here?"
-x-
Try as he might, Grisha couldn't stop thinking about that pale-skinned man that he examined. He looked like he was dead…and yet he was still among the living, injuries and all. Even his name was strange to pronounce; the way it was spoken made it seem like it was related to a foreign language. He might've had some relation to the people belonging to one of the Asian clans, but Grisha couldn't say for certain without first talking to the guy…and he was probably still resting, regaining his strength.
"…Hey, did you hear?" He heard a woman say on the street to a man. "Another factory in Wall Rose was hit again."
"That makes ten times now within the past two weeks," the man replied. "Do they know who's doing it?"
"The Garrison and security guards that mind the factories are completely clueless. The weird thing of it all is that not much was really taken from any of the factories robbed. Only some pieces of metal, small gas containers and wiring was taken, but in at least three of the factories, it seemed as though the forges were being used."
"Someone was making something over there?"
This got Grisha's attention, but even he found it confusing. Who would break into a series of factories in Wall Rose and steal minor resources that were probably not even going to set anyone back by a day? Or use their foundries to make something?
"It's gotta be a ghost or something," another man expresses. "Whoever's doing this isn't leaving any signs of their presence…unless it's not a person."
"But why would a ghost do any of this?" Another woman questions. "And what were they making in each factory? Each one makes a different series of things, like pieces. It doesn't add up at all."
Add up, Grisha thought as he suspected that whoever was behind these attacks was likely making something that was unlike what was currently in use by the three branches of the military.
-x-
Click! The trigger was pressed and the wire tied around the new blade shot like a bullet and lodged into the trunk of a tree.
Pēruwan pressed the trigger again and the wire retracted, pulling the blade out and reconnecting to the base of the assembly he had forged last night in the factory he visited. The wire was stronger than the ropes he had on him, and they could handle his weight better, and the blades were lighter and more resilient to wear and tear. However, he needed to get closer to his opponents in order to land effective strikes due to the reduction in time he had to practice using these new tools; he made sure to give himself between seven-ten feet of space to either strike or dodge, but any more than that and he could leave himself vulnerable to counterattacks. Still, he had to give the people that worked at the factories due credit for such work environments that were like Hell on Earth; he had to put in the effort, and hope that it would pay off.
"You were out there every night for week," one of his rescued associates utters to him as he picks up a recently forged blade that was no bigger than his hands. "And you've been up for most of the night. Don't you ever get tired?"
"Yes," he answers her, noticing that she was holding a cup in her right hand. "But those that don't do anything won't get anything done."
He threw the blade at the tree with lightning-like speed, and it lodged into the trunk like a knife through butter.
"Whoa," the woman reacts; she had seen him move fast before, but the way he threw the blade was like lightning striking the tree. "How do you do these things?"
"I am blessed…and cursed," he responds, and approaches the tree, removing the blade. "I long for the graces of angels, but I walk among demons that hide among the living. I see the souls of the damned, but I can't revive the souls of the lost and cherished on my own. The four that ride as one are what stand between the world's future as a whole…and its fall from grace, time and time again."
She didn't understand him…but she could guess that what he was saying…was meant to serve as guide and warning to those that listened. If he was blessed and cursed, then it meant that he was only one of four people that were on the same path to something great and he was currently on his own right now. He lived among the people, but he walked a world that was different from their own, full of hardships beyond what they were familiar with…and people that were not people, but monsters that hid among people.
"What will you do?" She asks him.
"Find the Unity…end the hatred…give hope to the world. If I do this…it will end the fear the Titans have been made to wrought upon the world. When that day comes, there will be peace and freedom for everyone."
She then offers him the cup, revealing that it was water, and he drank it.
-x-
In the months that passed since the murder of four of their seven Titan holders, Marley's military forces were met with scrutiny from their allies overseas. They were in the midst of forces from the east gathering together, putting aside their differences for the sake of surviving for the future, including the recently discovered program of relocating freed Eldians from encampment zones to countries for a better life. With only the Beast and Jaw Titan at their disposal, the War Hammer Titan indefinitely on reserve until the last moment, the operation to invade Paradis was no longer possible. Marley would have to refocus on facing their other enemies to maintain their power.
"…What do we know about the program with the freed Eldians?" Calvi questions.
"One of our allies from the south claims that some people came in the night and forced open their primary encampment zone and gave the Eldians a choice," a soldier explains. "They could remain locked up and let their souls die…or they could leave and live somewhere else where discrimination of any kind isn't tolerated and coexistence between all people is a requirement. Over eight-thousand Eldians chose the latter option and escaped. Before their forces could be sent to apprehend them and lock them back inside, two men, probably horsemen, came and dispatched them."
"Two men?" Magrath questions. "How?"
"One was armed with a bow and arrows that were not ordinary, and the other had these whips that were said to be strong enough to send eight of their soldiers flying eight feet into the air."
It sounded like a childish story, except a stranger identifiable only by their name and skin tone…dealt with four people that held the powers of the Armored, Colossal, Female and Cart Titans, making trouble for them. Whoever these…Four Horsemen were, they were likely a greater threat than other nations that were threatened by their power.
"Find out who these people are," Calvi orders them. "Where they lay low, who helps them, everything. Find out who they are."
-x-
"…Um, excuse me, Mr. Pēruwan," went a boy to the pale-skinned man, seeing him sitting by a fire in a hut, putting a small pouch together. "What are you making there?"
Pēruwan turns to look at the boy and cracks a small smile.
"Do you know anything about…lures?" He asks the boy, who nods that he knows nothing about what he was asked. "Never had rodents running around? Fishing (the boy nods in the negative)? Well, these little pouches…are to help me in case of an attack by the Titans."
"How?"
"Titans are attracted to the lifeforce of people, as well as anyone in possessing of the power of the Titans. Even if several Titans, like ten or eleven, were to appear in a city or attack a village, if there was someone, anyone, possessing a Titan power, those Titans would feel the presence of that power…and redirect their attention to the power over the lifeforce. It would be like eating something you need to get through the day…and wanting to eat something you love more than anything else you love eating."
"Like…like meatloaf?"
"Yeah. Like that."
"I love meatloaf."
Pēruwan throws up a pouch and catches it in his left hand.
"These pouches are the Titans' meatloaf," he tells him. "Light a match, throw it against a wall, let it explode, and the air becomes the lure that makes Titans look for a false source of Titan power, ignoring everyone around them. If something happens to involve Titans, I'm gonna use these to minimize the potential damage. The moment a Titan appears, set one of these off against a wall, and all the Titans will want to get what they think is the power of the Titans when there's nothing there but fumes."
"Wow. How do you know these things?"
"Years of training…and great teachers that had the patience to let me learn from my mistakes."
"Thank you again for saving us that day on the wall."
"If we're all for world, there's a world for us all."
-x-
Still, she couldn't see what had changed what had happened in the here and now. She possessed the power to see all things, past and future, but she couldn't see anything that was supposed to happen. At first, she was not concerned, but now, four months after hearing reports of a handful of robberies from the factories of Wall Rose, she wasn't seeing anything that her predecessors normally saw that was a curse. But she did see one thing that stood out: A man that walked a line between the land of the living…and the realm of the dead.
Who are you…Pēruwan? She wonders as she sits under the shade of a tree beside a younger girl, holding a book on her lap. What are you? Are you a man longing for death…or are you ghost that seeks to live again?
To be continued…
/A/N: This was among many things that was overdue. Basically, Pēruwan is an AoT version of Shinji Ikari/Death, the Endgame, but intended to be like the Michael Myers of the Halloween timeline that takes place forty years after the first film; he's meant to be more human than supernatural, but he's still somewhat detached from the world of the living, dedicated to completing his duty to the Restorative. Can any of you guess who the mystery person that complains about being unable to see anything? Or take a guess at what is to come next?