The talk with Mikasa went surprisingly well, too well in fact.

Floch and I stood in front of her, all three of us grouped together on the outskirts of the camp away from any potential eavesdroppers. Both of us awaiting her response to our proposal, both expecting her to jump on board with the idea. In a week's time, we'll be there ready to intervene and rescue all those scouts from a potenial massacre. Of course, she didn't know the finer details for obvious reasons, such as, hey, we know this because we're from the future!

"That is the stupidest thing I've heard from you yet, I knew you were reckless but I never expected it'd be this bad..." She admonished coldly, her gaze dropping down to the ground with disappointment.

"Great, we can start prepar- what?" I jumped in excitedly only to realize she hadn't actually agreed.

She looked back up at me with a frown and something akin to disgust. "Have these powers rotted your brain? I'll never agree to that, and you can't go either, Eren."

"W-why not, Mikasa?" I stuttered, unsure if I was still talking to the same person or not.

"I thought you've gone crazy when you first told us about your... situation, admittedly you weren't and I gave you my full support, I even agreed to help you control your powers, but to throw yourself into danger not even a week later when you could barely move around in that titan is... really stupid." She turned to Floch with a harsh gaze, he flinched in response. "And you, you're the one egging him on aren't you?" He avoided her gaze sheepishly.

"Come on, Mikasa! See the bigger picture here, I can help! I must! I can't sit around doing nothing when it's humanity's survival on the line!" I argued, this was the most exciting thing I'd be taking part of in ages.

"There is no bigger picture, this isn't a game Eren. There is wanting to help and then there's punching above your weight. They're veterans and they know what they're doing, so let them handle it. Not to mention, being a titan will naturally make you their enemy, regardless of if you help them or not."

I grit my teeth in frustration, why did she have to be so responsible? Didn't she know this was my story? "How can you say that?! You're not the one with powers here, do you know how it feels knowing you can't do anything to help?" I swear I saw her flinch for a second there, but I couldn't be too sure. "This is bigger than the both of us, If you can't see that then... F-fine, we'll go alone without you."

In hindsight, I should not have said that.

The temperature plummeted around us, and the fleeting glimmer in her eyes vanished, swiftly replaced by a chilling embodiment of death incarnate. She fixed us with a deadly glare, daring us to cross her path once more. Her cold gaze then dropped to my legs with a disturbing focus. "You're capable of regenerating your limbs, right? So I could simply sever them all and secure you somewhere until their expedition's over, problem solved."

A shudder coursed through me at how easily she said that before she shifted her attention to Floch, who recoiled slightly in dread. "Unfortunately for you, I doubt you share that ability, but since you're inseparable from him, I suppose your fate will be the same."

"S-shit, Eren, what's with her?" Floch murmured anxiously, making sure she couldn't hear.

"I have no idea," I whispered back, equally alarmed.

"If we're done here, you should both head back inside; we're at risk of missing class," Mikasa announced, pivoting to leave. She halted momentarily to send a stern glance our way. "And don't even think about sneaking away; I'll be keeping an eye on you."

As she departed, we were left agape, then exchanging awkward looks, still processing the encounter.

"Uhmm..." I trailed, unsure of how to proceed.

"Uhhh..."

"She's not serious is she?" I asked.

"Why are you asking me that? She stuck an ODM hook in my throat before I died."

"..."

"..."

"Eren, I told you to get to class, now!" Mikasa shouted from the distance, startling us before we hurried after her.

This wasn't over yet, another battle for another day.

It was so over.

Nothing worked, she wouldn't fucking budge. Arguing, pleading, I even thought about grovelling, but nothing got through to her. I briefly entertained the thought of kissing her to take advantage of her love for me but there is no guarantee Chris Hansen won't be waiting for me at the barracks. It wasn't like she was in the wrong, in fact, she was the voice of reason in all of this. But, and this is a very big but here, I had to be there, at all costs. Not only did I need to practice on a bunch of lobotomized titans to get a feel for it, I also needed to save all of those nameless, faceless people I've never met purely out of the goodness of my own heart.

So what if we had no plan besides go there and wreak havoc? It worked out greatly for us in the past, did people think I planned everything I did?

I frowned a little at that, which "I" was I refering to? It was starting to get confusing lately, no matter. I'll figure it out eventually.

And just like that, a week passed and Floch and I spent it all looking for opportunities to slip away but true to her word, she really was watching. I slumped forward on the table, as Armin patted my back comfortingly, he had no clue what was happening but it wasn't important anymore.

"I'm gonna get to the mess hall early, see you there, Eren." Armin told me, I grunted in acknowledgedment and heard his steps fade away from the classroom only to be replaced by a new set of approaching footsteps.

"Eren, it's all good." Floch spoke up.

I looked up with confusion. "Huh? What's all good?"

He had a blank look on his face. "The expedition, it all worked out fine."

"...What expedition?"

Floch looked over both shoulders, there were a few of their classmates with them but none were close enough to hear, he turned back and leaned in with a whisper. "You know, that expedition."

"Wait, wait, hold on. They already went?" I asked in mounting puzzlement, frowning.

He turned sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck. "Uhh, yeah. They left earlier than expected and have already returned from their mission."

My mouth opened and closed several times, struggling to form the words before I got it out. "W-wha- I- what? They just left and came back? I thought you had a spy network that kept track of them? And what do you mean they're fine? They got fucking massacred the first time around, so what the hell changed?"

"I don't know. And hey, in case you forgot it's not 854 anymore, messages take days to come and go, so I had no clue about that... But apparently it's all good, the flank didn't collapse this time around, they still had minimal casualities though." Floch supplied.

"B-but, we had to help... They were going to die... I was going to convince Mikasa and then rush there to save the day... you mean to tell me the world can just move forward without me? That certain things don't just repeat word for word? What kind of stupid anti-climactic shit is that? Do you know how much I waited for this?" I banged my head down on the table in disbelief, I thought I looked cool when I first asked him to inform Mikasa too.

He furrowed his brow, "Yeah, I don't know, are you okay?"

"I'm perfectly okay."

I wanted to scream and shout, and let it all out.

"Errr, I see. Well, the crisis was averted so I suppose that's one good thing about all of this." And with that, I was alone again.

What the hell was that? It was built up to be some epic adventure so why did the problem resolve itself without any of my input? Was it some kind of butterfly effect? I could picture it so clearly; stalking the scouts from a distance with Mikasa and Floch, waiting for the titans to overwhelm their defensive lines and then swoop in with the other two like guarding angels, afterwards we'd flee from the scene, leaving the scouts to wonder about their mysterious titan savior and his two masked companions. Maybe we'd even run into Erwin, Hange or Levi while at it, it would have been so cool, and so fucking kino.

It was bullshit that's what it was.

I slammed my fists on the table and stood up, growling in frustration. "Fuck!" I heard a high pitched shriek and a thud to my left, I turned and spotted Historia down on the floor, looking up at me with a startled expression.

"E-Eren, you scared me-"

"Look, I'm really pissed off right now so keep the fake concern shit to yourself, I'm fine, see you later." I fumed as I took my leave, not seeing the shock yet lingering intrigue in her gaze, okay I lied, I kinda saw it out of the corner of my eye as I walked past her but it could have been anything.

God, I couldn't wait to kill Reiner and the other two, otherwise this wasn't much of a story so far.

A couple of weeks later, it was time for that stupid three day mission out to retrieve some dumb item from bumfuck nowhere. Remember that one time I said I should write everything to remember better? I didn't, because I forgot, stupid of me, yes. I tuned out Shadis' speech as we stood out in the searing heat, wondering when he'd get it over with so we could get on with the mission.

This wasn't just a simple retrieval mission, this is the day I get to finally kill the warriors one by one.

"Do not forget that!"

"Yes sir!"

I jumped in my skin as everyone around me shouted, fuck, that startled me. I looked around for a second in a momentary daze before I followed the cadets to the gate where they began assigning teams, it was when they handed me a slip of non-canonical paper that I realized something. I wasn't on a team with any of those bastards, and our routes, while parallel, were nowhere near eachother to warrant me intercepting them without raising suspicion.

I looked for Floch's help, but the guy and his team were going in the complete opposite direction. I grimaced, seeing Ymir walk up next to him to mount her horse, I briefly thought about letting him know about the risky route he'd be taking but decided to just let fate guide him, if luck was on the redhead's side, Ymir would be wrapped around his finger for the foreseeable future.

I looked back at Marco, Armin, Sasha, Mina, Jean and Connie then groaned, this day couldn't get any fucking worse anyway. I specifically told Floch not to do anything about the bandits that would kidnap Historia just so that I could vent my frustrations out on them, but something told me it slipped his mind as well.

"Eren." A voice stopped me.

I turned, realizing it was Historia, or uh, Krista for now. "Yeah, what's up?"

"I just wanted to tell you to do your best on this excersise." She spoke, but without any of that nice cutsey act she put on for the others.

"Uh, right, thanks, you too." I smiled back at her, before we both joined our team and left the premises of the camp. An hour into the journey I was so bored out of my mind from the silence that I began to think about the geography around us, I theorized that nobody would be speaking a word until we reached a certain point, and that's when their canon dialogue would begin, I call it the... I don't know, I'll need to coin a term for it later, if I still remembered.

Where was I? Oh, right, this island. If I recall correctly, this world was just earth but flipped and mirrored, so the south pole became the north and vice versa. Meaning that Eldia, or Madagascar, would be way up north where The United Kingdom, and all the Nordic countries would be, and yet, the weather and geography didn't reflect that at all. Why did this island have a desert, semi-arid landscapes and mesas? Given the proximity to the ocean, in other words, being surrounded by it, it should have moderated the island's temperatures and humidity, not to mention all the moist air being carried from there.

It wasn't like we were at a point where we had to worry about "global warming" and It wasn't like the walls had anything to do with it, a hundred years is not enough for fertile land to just become a desert wasteland... And I'm only bringing this up because the heat was getting to me.

It was in the middle of my autistic overthinking that I overheard the start of a conversation, good, they were sentient again. Boredom was killing me, I thought being conditioned to living away from the comforts of modernity would have cured my low attention span but apparently not.

"-We'd be stupid if we do, there's no need to rush." I heard Jean say.

I took offense to that. "I am not taking my sweet ass time in this heat, are you an idiot?"

That immediately lit his fuse. "Oi, watch your tone shithead! Or I'll teach you some manners, I am not exerting myself over a useless exercise like this."

I grit my teeth, "You stupid fu-, screw this, I'm gonna skip ahead." I declared, and I was about to before Marco stopped me.

"We should stick to our formation, Eren." He worriedly told me.

I reluctantly conceded, tuning out the sounds of Marco fretting about Armin recording the altercation and simply went back to scanning our surroundings and inwardly bitching about it. It wouldn't be until a few hours later that we'd set up a camp deep in the forest by nightfall, the aroma of cooked lizard wafting through the air, apparently, the bastard had caught a lizard while I was daydreaming, much to Sasha's delight.

I noticed a rustle in the underbrush, my head instantly turned towards the sound, only to see nothing. My eyes narrowed skeptically, almost dismissing it as merely the work of a forest critter, when I observed Historia reacting to it as well. A sudden smirk played on my lips, a burst of energy surging through me, as a chuckle escaped my lips. They had finally arrived.

Sasha's claim held true—the lizard was great. However, my thoughts during the meal wandered to a more morbid taste: that of human flesh. After all, taste buds remained functional even in titan form. A wave of horror washed over me as I realized the necessity of consuming them whole for the sake of my cover—including bones, meat, blood, and the literal shit stored in their intestines.

The meat and blood better mask the taste of their feces, or else I'll be the first vegan titan.

With everyone but Historia retired for the night, sleep eluded me. Compelled by an invisible force, I followed her, intending to join her in waiting for the impending ambush. Striding into a clearing, I discovered a tranquil lake with Historia sitting pensively at its bank, her horse tethered nearby for reasons unknown.

"Hey, what brings you out here?" I inquired, startling her.

She whipped around, her expression a mix of surprise and caution. "E-Eren? What are you doing here?"

I couldn't help but snort in amusement. "You can't just parrot my question back at me. Mind if I join you?"

After a moment's hesitation, she nodded, and I settled beside her. Together, we sat in silence, absorbed in the serene view of the water before us. "It's quite a sight, the moonlight reflecting off the lake, isn't it?" she mused.

"Yeah, I rarely take the time to appreciate it, the moon that is." I admitted, giving her a curious glance.

"Then in those rare moments, do you ever think about what the dark side of the moon's like?." she asked.

Reclining, I stared up at it, pondering her question and decided to just go along with it. "Hmm, sure, It's a mystery isn't it? Hidden from view and all, it leaves a lot to the imagination." What the hell was I saying, It didn't even feel like I was saying that, is it possible to be out of character when you're being yourself?

"The imagination, huh? I guess that's one good thing about it, when you don't know what it's like it's easy to get your hopes up, but you might get really disappointed if it's not what you expected." She replied softly, before craning her neck to stare up at the night sky. "You told me something in a fit of anger a while back, maybe you didn't really give it much thought as you said it but it made me curious." She turned to look at me, "Why did you say that my concern for you was fake?"

My eyes widened a bit, my heart skipping a beat. Ahh, the things we say in the heat of the moment. "I did?"

I met her gaze, realizing that attempting to play dumb wasn't an option, I sighed, and looked back at the water. "It's because everything seems too... rehearsed with you. It's cute, sure, but it doesn't feel genuine to me so I don't like it. I suspect there's more to you than what you're showing." I offered an apologetic glance, acknowledging my harshness. "Sorry, I guess. But I can't hold myself back from speaking my mind sometimes, especially when I'm in a foul mood, you just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time."

She shook her head, "It's fine... I appreciate it, in a way."

I suddenly remembered a line of dialogue from the original timeline. "You think you'll drop the act one day? I might not think about the moon much but I do wonder what you're like when you're just being yourself, just a normal girl going through it with the rest of us."

She turned away and tilted her head to look down at her knees, I could have sworn I saw the corners of her mouth twitch a little but it was a little dark, "Maybe-"

Our moment was shattered when cold steel pressed against our necks—our ambushers had arrived silently, barefoot to ensure surprise. "Come with us quietly, if you yell to alert your friends, we'll kill you." Our kidnapper said.

As Historia's horse ran away, we were swiftly and silently taken hostage, led back to the camp without a struggle. I offered Historia a reassuring glance, though it did little to calm her nerves. The camp was quickly subdued, our squad helpless under the aim of muskets, one of the men stepped on Connie's leg, causing him to wake up crying out in pain, that woke up the rest.

"Wha-" Jean gasped, as did the others when they opened their eyes to the barrel of a weapon.

"Stay nice and quiet while we take your ODM gear off of you, if you make a fuss, it'll cost you your lives, don't be stupid." The masked man aiming at Jean spoke.

Minutes had passed when our squad was rendered powerless, witnessing the enemy loading our precious equipment into their carriages. "We have no intention of killing them unless provoked. After some time, they will be released. Do not attempt a pursuit, or there will be dire consequences," they warned.

Unexpectedly, I found myself selected as a hostage alongside Historia, to my delight. As their carriages whisked away, Historia and I were unceremoniously tethered to the carriage's ceiling, our proximity forced and our movements restricted by bonds and gags.

The rest wouldn't dare to follow, after all, without my presence, their primary motivation for Historia's rescue was absent, they would inevitably retreat and report our capture to the command at boot camp. Which was fine for what I was about to do, once I felt a safe distance had been established from our friends, I saw an opportunity to act.

Struggling against my gag, I tried to grab the attention of our guard. My efforts paid off when he finally acknowledged me, albeit with a harsh blow to my abdomen with his rifle before he removed my gag. "What do you want?" he gruffly inquired.

"I need to pee. You surely don't want me to soil this carriage, do you?" His response was a disdainful sneer before signaling the carriage to halt.

Opting for a more sinister approach, he said, "We have no time to waste, I have a better idea," and pushed me from the carriage. The ground greeted me harshly, grazing my palm and drawing blood, yet I couldn't help but smirk at the oversight, branding him a fool in my mind.

"Stand up and walk," he commanded, nudging me with his weapon towards a nearby ditch. I obeyed, but not before shouting reassurances to a visibly shaken Historia.

"Hey Krista!" I shouted, smirking back at her over my shoulder. "Remember our talk earlier? Well, I have secrets of my own too!"

His patience wearing thin, the guard silenced me with another rifle blow and led me to a small cliff's edge. "Shut the fuck up, and walk!" I snorted a little, this dumbass had no idea what was waiting for him. "Stop there, this will do."

Though I longed for a memorable one liner, I was ninety-nine percent sure I was about to be shot before I could speak. So I resorted to wordlessly transforming instead, catching everyone by surprise. In a flash of lightning, my human form was replaced by a towering titan of raw muscle, anger and hate, instantly annihilating the guard closest to me with the sheer force and heat of my metamorphosis, leaving nothing but a charred carcass in my wake.

Those forty seconds of me seizing each man, as they fired their weapons in ineffectual desperation or attempted to escape, indeed held a certain allure. But once I had devoured the last one, I was met with an unsettling silence and a disappointing realization—the fun was already over. God fucking dammit, I was looking forward to this so much and it was over!

Shifting back from my titan form, I stepped away from the vanishing remnants of my discarded flesh. My footsteps led me to the carriage where Historia stood. As I approached and climbed inside, the atmosphere shifted palpably.

There, Historia 'stood', gazing back at me in sheer terror. Her slender frame was seized by uncontrollable tremors, eyes wide, darting frantically, as if expecting the horror to continue. Her lips, pale and quivering, hung open in a silent scream, and her legs appeared drained of all strength, causing the rope to strain her wrists as a result. I noticed an acrid odor permeating the air—and saw the evident cause: Historia had lost control of her bladder in her fear.

"Krista, are you okay?" I ventured cautiously, my concern genuine despite knowing the absurdity of the question in such a moment. Reacting to the sound of my voice, her body gave one last shudder before she succumbed wholly to her fear, fainting, her head lolling forward limply.

Yeah, maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

And scene!

UberKreisler back at you again with another insightful piece of commentary!

To Cpecific: "One day you will look back in shame at such a non-existent understanding of the entire story"

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, so I'll assume it's genuine and offer apologies later if I misunderstood you.

But if a writer wraps up 13+ years of a complex storyline with "Only Ymir knows" and "It was Mikasa all along." and "I don't know why I did it, I just had to" and "My head is all scrambled." then followed by "I did it because I was an idiot." then I'm sorry to say, but it's dogshit, complete dogshit and I'm tired of people pretending that the ending was a masterpiece without any flaws.

They had to change the dialogue in the anime for a reason and even then it was still a shitshow.

I know for damn sure Eren didn't do the rumbling because he was an idiot or didn't know why he had to do it, he did it to be free of the hatred of his world and to secure a future for his friends and the island at all costs, for no other reason other than being born into that world. No amount of "you didn't understand the ending" will change my mind about that.

That's all, see you guys next time!