Creation began on 12-03-23

Creation ended on 01-09-24

Attack on Titan

The Anti-Yeagerists of New Rückzahlung

The sun had gone down and the path in the night was illuminated only by the stars and moonlight, leaving Kaede and Shinji to walk their lonely trek into a wood of tall trees that looked as though it had seen better days like the dockyards. It was rather bothersome because they were in unknown terrain, in the territory of an enemy that was cut off from the world, and unable to expect anything from a foe they knew nothing about.

"I honestly don't know what's worse right now," went Shinji to Kaede as they look up at the branches, "the fact that we're exposed…or the fact that we don't have any light."

"Both," Kaede tells him, thinking about why, after all of these years, Paradis would cause problems for her home because the Eldians that used to live on the island chose to abandon a belief they never had any desire to embrace or commit to. "But they're the lesser of two evils I'm concerned about."

In the end, Kaede would be more worried about Sumairu and her friends and whoever else had been captured by the Yeagerists. The sooner they found them and left this island, the better because it was now only a matter of time before Paradis became an issue that the world needed to resolve because some people started behaving like rats. But she prayed that whatever fate befell Paradis wouldn't reflect on Epilogés; her town was a beacon of hope and salvation for those looking for a fresh start and a change from whatever dark beginnings they had suffered from. Hell, even people from foreign countries that wanted to start over with a clean slate were welcome to Epilogés as long as it was what they wanted, just to wash their hands of whatever wrongs they had experienced in the past.

Shine! A light was shone on them, blinding them from seeing what is in front of them.

"Aah!" They gasp, covering their eyes.

"Identify yourselves!" A female voice utters in the darkness.

"We're just travelers," Shinji lies.

"We've heard worse," a male voice responds behind them. "Who are you?"

"We don't have to answer if we don't want to," Kaede tells them. "We have the right to remain quiet in the face of people we don't know."

The light was moved, allowing the pair to see a young woman dressed in a military uniform.

"That is true," she says. "Are you a Yeagerist?"

-x-

New Rückzahlung was a rather small village, but it seemed different from much of what Sumairu and her friends had seen in the city they were liberated from by Armin. It had a more…friendly atmosphere, and the people living there, while weary of outsiders, weren't all that put off by their presence. In fact, most of the people living in the village were just amateur farmers and doctors, scraping a living by doing what they could with what they were capable of achieving within the village. The idea was to spend the night in New Rückzahlung and then find a boat that would transport the former captives back to the mainland, away from Paradis.

"How many of you are there?" Sumairu asks a man that was once a Yeagerist, but now an Anti-Yeagerist, sporting a scar on the left side of his face, over his eye. "Oh…"

"Not enough to call ourselves an army," he responds. "We're just a resistance."

"Is it alright to ask how…that happened (she points to her left eye)?"

"I wouldn't dedicate my heart, so I was penalized. I wanted to be a doctor. Unfortunately, I couldn't achieve such a dream so long as the Yeagerists were in control of Paradis. But around here, I could at least help the people that don't believe in them."

Sumairu smiles at him.

"Thank you again for helping them," Armin praises a woman that was stoking a fire in front of them as they sat around it in the middle of the village.

"Don't mention it," she tells him. "Anyone that doesn't support the regime is welcome here."

"I thought everyone on Paradis supported the Yeagerists," a young man expresses to the woman.

"Not everyone believes in fighting just to live. If you live, you live however you should desire to live, not because someone tells you that you have to fight. If you want to become a farmer, then you should devote yourself to that goal. If you want to be a doctor, you should work hard to achieve that dream. If you want to explore, then by all means, go out and see the world. Don't follow the shit that those people try to feed your mind."

"What did you want to be? What do you want to be?"

"Dancer."

"Classical or modern?"

"Both."

"Beautiful."

Gong! Someone from further away from the fire had rung a gong that served as a signal to alert the Anti-Yeagerists that a scouting trio had returned from surveying the woods nearby.

"We found these two," a man expresses as they came to the fire. "We don't really know who they are, except the woman has gray hair and is with a man of Asian descent."

Sumairu looks over and sees the two being brought over, and instantly recognizes them. It was Kaede and Shinji.

"Kaede!" She cries as she runs over to her sister, hugging her. "You're alive!"

Kaede, who was surprised to see Sumairu here, hugs her back.

"Sumairu, how'd you get here? Why are you here?" She asks her.

"It turns out that not everyone on Paradis is a fan of the Yeagerists."

Kaede looks at the people of the village and notices that some were dressed in military uniform, but their Yeagerists logos were crossed out by large lines.

"I don't follow," she expresses, confused.

"Anti-Yeagerists," Armin answers her. "Basically, former Yeagerists that don't believe in what they stood for."

"Defectors," went the Asian man, Shinji, in realization.

"Yes," Armin complies.

The pair looked at each other before sitting down in front of the fire. It would be some time before the sun came up and they would go back to the docks once informing the former captives of their seven-day schedule to get them and leave Paradis. It was a miracle that they were already free by the time they showed up, so they could get away with six days to spare.

"Armin Arlert," Kaede addressed the elderly man. "Thank you for freeing my sister and the others. It means a lot to me."

"After all these years, I can't let the Yeagerists do as they please because of how they choose to view life," Armin tells her. "I have lost my peace of mind in this bitter world, but I will go to my grave with the knowledge that I chose what I believed in that was my belief and not someone else's. I once believed in a former friend who ended up doing any wrongs…and I still hate him for doing all that he did."

"Eren Yeager?"

"Yeah."

"Your…former friend…is an omen to people that still carry the scars of his hatred, which is why nobody wants anything to do with Paradis or its people, preferring the peace that exists in the world by ignoring the one part of it that no longer has anything to offer the rest of it, for better or for worse."

"But…you used to live on Paradis, didn't you?"

"A newborn has no choice is choosing where it's born, only that it's born, and there's a difference between the land of one's birth and the land they call their home. Paradis…is not my home…and will never be my home. It's just a…a place of dread that forfeited its own peace for self-righteous fury towards the rest of the world that would rather forget that they exist."

"And I think it's because of this that the Yeagerists are trying to create trouble for other people."

"They destroyed the museum of my town…just because they weren't part of the history we embrace. There will be no place in Epilogés' history for anything Yeagerist-related, not even their crest that is a perversion of the Survey Corps' Wings of Freedom crest."

"Try telling the Yeagerists that," went one of the Anti-Yeagerists, "only they refuse to listen and accept that the only place for them in this world is an island that the rest of the world wants nothing to do with. Is it true that the Eldians that defected from Paradis over thirty years ago built Epilogés and it became a booming community?"

"Of the towns and cities built and rebuilt over the decades," said Shinji, "Epilogés is one of the thriving towns that made its mark in the world. It no longer even matters if the people that built it are or were from Paradis. It's a peaceful place to live in and…build a life you can be proud of because it was what you wanted."

"Maybe the remaining ten percent of Paradis' defectors should take the high road and relocate."

"The remaining ten percent?" Kaede repeated. "I thought everyone that severed their ties with the rest of Paradis left the island over thirty years ago."

"No," answers one of the female Anti-Yeagerists. "The people that were able to at the time did, but the ones that grew up after the abandonment never could get away."

She then took off one of her weapons and slid it over to Kaede and Shinji to look at. It was a blade that resembled a box cutter knife, only bigger.

"A piece of the Omni-Directional Mobility Gear," Shinji expresses. "Yeagerists still use these?"

"No," she answers. "Anti-Yeagerists, however, choose to use them because of what the Yeagerists did."

"Why did you enlist to begin with?"

"We didn't enlist. We weren't given a choice to. We were conscripted."

Kaede looks at her with disbelief.

"How long ago?" She asks.

"Over ten years ago," she answers. "The Yeagerists came to our villages and told our families that we were needed to fill in the ranks of their military force. When our parents all refused, they killed them and took us. We were to be their two-hundred-fiftieth unit…but we couldn't live with the fact that they weren't training us to be protectors. They were training us to be murderers."

"I…I didn't know that there were others like my parents."

"What, people that didn't support the Yeagerist regime? Practically every village on the outskirts of Paradis lost their faith in the Reiss royal family when they chose to dismantle the previous branches of the military in favor of the Yeagerists. They made up only ten-fifteen percent while the former districts and Mitras made up the remaining eighty-five-ninety percent. Of course, when Historia Reiss found out, she didn't do anything about it, except continue to enable the Yeagerists, which lost her the support of the villages she abandoned."

"I can't believe Historia never told me," Armin expressed; he had expected the previous queen to confide in him about everything the Yeagerists had done, but he guessed that even that was just too much to ask from her. "So every village on the outskirts were removed?"

"All except New Rückzahlung," the Anti-Yeagerist with the scar over his eye states. "We made our stand against the Yeagerist regime when we were sent here. Our superiors had ordered us to fire on civilians that refused to support the regime. They wanted us to slaughter men, women and children, people with lives to live, lives to cultivate into something better than what we were dealt by them…and we couldn't do that. We raised our guns up…and we turned them on our former superiors and the men and women that supported them."

"You defected," Shinji went. "Every last one of you in this village?"

"The whole unit," he answers. "If freedom is the right of everyone, why deny it to those that don't want to fight? If peace is the preferred option over conflict, why fight against those that don't want to fight? When we killed them in favor of the villagers, it…it didn't even feel like a choice. It felt like…it was the right thing to do, that we were doing something that actually made a difference to people that had nothing to do with the Yeagerists."

"It was hard to describe why we all did what we did that day all those years ago," the female member expresses. "It wasn't a choice…or an order…and we couldn't explain it any other way than that it was the right decision to make, even when it made us all enemies of the island."

"A feeling?" Shinji suggests on the description of their reasoning to defect. "An instinct? People that had no right to decide your lives trying to decide other people's lives, so the feeling shared was like a calling, telling you that if they persisted, they were going to keep doing it to other people until there was no one left to resist them?"

"Yeah," they both agreed with him.

It was around an hour later when the Anti-Yeagerists got up to do their sentry duty, which left Kaede and Armin awake while everyone else was asleep around the fire. There was this silence stare down between the young woman and the elder man that had freed her sister and the others…and the failed ambassador knew there was something they needed to get out of the way.

"You're disgusted by what Eren did," he states to Kaede. "I'm not proud of what he did, either."

"And your role as an ambassador didn't put much of a dent in anything, even if it's what he wanted from his role as a villain," Kaede replies. "So long as his Yeagerists continue to oppress their own people, if that's even what you can call those that want nothing to do with their perverse cause, this island will never have any peace in this world that has moved on without it."

"It's hard to comprehend that the rest of the world would have nothing to do with one island."

"When everyone you know and love are dead and the people responsible are associated with the man that took them away, it's easy to hold on to that hatred. But since nobody wants to go to war with people from an island that can offer nothing to contribute towards anything meaningful, they did the next best thing, which was to cut off Paradis. It was already self-sustaining, so there was no need to give the people there anything beyond their isolation. As long as the people that support the Yeagerists stay on Paradis, the world can live with their existence, knowing that they're nowhere near any of them."

"The Yeagerists are still convinced that sooner or later, war will return."

"Only if it's war that they desire. Either way, I'm not going to let Paradis or the Yeagerists harm my town or my loved ones like they did with the museum where the past was preserved and embraced before the Rumbling. If they make trouble for Epilogés, I will do what I have to in order to make sure that they can never cause trouble again."

"But maybe if they were informed…"

"They were informed long ago that the world wants nothing to do with them," they heard Sumairu say as she turned over on the ground, facing them. "They know the world wants nothing to do with them. They know the world still hates and fears any hint of reprisal from this island. It's only harder for them to accept because they don't want to accept being ignored by the people that were nice enough to look the other way and just leave them be. They think that they're the victims in this all when they're just the troublemakers, them and anyone that supports their regime, wanting to justify their actions against the rest of the world that has learned to tolerate them by leaving them alone forever. Can you tell them to stop, Mr. Arlert? Can you make them see that their stubbornness and desire for war is going to get them and the people they claim to want to protect killed? Can you, Mr. Arlert?"

Armin sighs and responds, "No. They won't listen to me. They won't listen to anyone."

"'Dedicate your hearts'," Kaede utters with dissatisfaction. "What a load of bullshit that saying is when it's perverted. You can't dedicate your heart if you don't believe in the cause you're being told to dedicate yourself to. And even if you were told why…would you really want to? Even if you were to believe in the cause, is it enough to justify it?"

"Can you answer something for me, Ms. Sogen?" Armin says to Kaede. "Sumairu thought you were dead because a Yeagerist shot at you. How did you survive? How is it that you're alive?"

"Because a promise that had been made long ago had to be kept," she explains. "A power born of the people of Epilogés' need for hope to preserve their lives was made, and I am just the person that was tasked to carry out the promise."

"A promise that was made long ago to protect the people of Epilogés? But…how does that explain you being alive if a Yeagerist shot you? Normally, they shoot to kill."

"And I nearly died that night were it not for the promise that came to me. Did I want to live or was I going to just die? I didn't want to die, and I didn't want to leave Sumairu in the hands of some madmen. I went from dying to surviving a near-death experience…because I became more than human."

For just an instant, Armin saw in front of him, not this Kaede Sogen that once lived on Paradis as a newborn…but a human-sized, humanoid creature with dark skin and hair. It appeared androgynous, but clearly demonstrated a feminine sense, probably due to the woman, and this humanoid was very exposed, just like a… His eyes widened in realization, unable to unsee the promise that was made to protect the people of the town the Yeagerists had attacked without any provocation and ended the lives of eight museum workers. As fearful as he was in this moment, he didn't think about running because he was already dying.

"You," he utters, "possess the power of the Titans?"

"No," she responds. "I possess the power of a promise…that mirrors the lost power of the Titans. I don't have any memories belonging to people of the past, the power to command anyone against their will or are just being exploited as expendable fodder, not even the blessing or curse to see events before they transpire. I'm not looking to lead anyone into a future that doesn't exist…and I'm not looking to change the world or ruin any further like that suicidal bastard did. I don't care if he was your friend or what he believed in. All I care about is…making sure the people the Yeagerists hurt go home and go back to their lives as best as they can. But if they did worse than hurt Sumairu…then all bets are off. They want a war, they'll get one. It just won't be the one they long for. But I pray they don't go that far at all."

"Why?"

"Because war is Hell, and the people that desire it are either desperate to become self-righteous heroes…or genocidal nuts that don't know the difference between a game and reality. And I have people I don't want to lose because some crazies desperate to be right about something."

If Armin could, he would've told this woman that she was similar to Eren Yeager, only moral and ethical. But he had to remind himself that she was not like him at all; she refused to send anyone to war, knowing that they may not come back…and she was not a Paradis sympathizer or had any faith in its people. No, this Kaede Sogen…was simply a simple woman not looking for something she had to fight for if she knew it didn't even exist in a way that she probably wanted it to be. She was a woman that already knew what she wanted, probably already had it…and just wanted to protect it from those that were looking to take it away from her because they decided that she didn't deserve it.

"For some reason, Ms. Sogen," he says instead, "I think Paradis might've been better off in the world had someone like you existed all that time ago."

"Maybe," Kaede responds, "but better off in what way?"

"A benevolent way."

Kaede sighs and states that such a way might've been possible had she been alive back then, but whatever was done was whatever was done, and there was no changing that, no matter what any of them believed. In the end, lives were taken, and Paradis as a whole was still the enemy of the world that the world wanted nothing to do with, anymore. So, this was the way things had to be until the very end. They couldn't be changed…because nobody wanted to change what they believed led to a peaceful present so long as the people of Paradis stayed in their domain, their little empire of dirt and hate that offered nothing in return.

-x-

"…Maybe New Rückzahlung," went a female Yeagerist to her fellow soldiers, suggesting the location of the missing captives, "but we have no authority over there, and the Anti-Yeagerists wouldn't hand them over, even if we asked them to."

"Whoever said anything about asking them to hand over the missing captives?" A male Yeagerist questions. "If they're still on the island, we have all the authority we need to take back our prisoners and lock them away for the rest of their lives."

Some of the Yeagerists weren't really all for going to that village where an entire squadron of former Yeagerists made their stand and defected in favor of protecting the villagers that chose not to support their goal of protecting the people from the world's reprisal. It was better that the village was left alone with its own protectors that made a choice to stand against the Yeagerists' cause if they were against the notion of fighting to live. But the majority of them didn't tolerate this small truce and wanted to oppress any and all opposition that stood between them and their objective to protect Paradis' people from the enemies of the world.

"Gather the troops," another male Yeagerist orders. "We're heading to New Rückzahlung."

To be continued…

A/N: Destroy the canon and remake it to suit your interests. When you embrace creativity and self-expression, the world is yours, no matter what others think.