Foresight
Chapter 2
Eren stared at the massive rock that'd crushed their home with disbelief.
He could still feel his heart racing. It was too close. Way too close. 'One moment later, and mom would've been...'
He couldn't even bring himself to finish that sentence.
His mother was the first to pull herself together. Unlike them, Carla had been caught up staring at the enormous Titan towering over Shiganshina's wall, her face twisted into an expression of muted horror.
"Eren, Mikasa, Armin!" she snapped, voice laced with fear. "We need to get inside Wall Maria! Come, hurry!"
*Thud! Thud! Thud!*
The rhythmic fall of heavy footsteps had them whipping around as one to the source.
Down the street, in the direction of the breach, a titan was approaching. Eren's eyes widened.
It was tall. As tall as a tower, its shape inhuman. Despite its height, the arms and legs looked unusually short. The chest, however, was disproportionately large. Ribs bulging outwards enough that you could count them behind the flesh and skin.
His eyes rose to its face.
His pulse quickened and fear gripped his heart with icy fingers.
Blonde, shoulder-length hair. A smile stretched so wide he felt his own cheeks hurt at the sight. Then he saw its eyes.
Blue, cold, and unfocused. Yet, he could've sworn it was staring right back at him.
His vision blurred, and for a moment it was as if he was seeing double.
A blood smeared maw and a smile impossibly wide, lined with an endless string of pearly white teeth. A blurry image of gigantic, fleshy hands plucking a woman from amongst the ruins of a house.
A lance of pain shot through his mind, making his head throb. He clutched his skull with shaking hands, eyes clenched shut. 'What the... Why... Why am I seeing this again? Who's that-?'
"-...ren! Eren!"
A pair of hands came to rest on his shoulders. He startled. Someone was shouting his name.
His mother.
"Huh?" he asked, still a little dazed.
"Eren, look at me! What's wrong, are you hurt!?" she inquired, still worried for her son in the face of disaster. Mikasa hovered beside him, and Armin was fidgeting nervously, casting fearful glances at the looming figure of the titan in the distance.
The situation dawned on him.
"N-no, I'm fine!" he assured.
His mother grabbed him by the hand, started to drag him along.
"Come on, kids! Quickly!" she yelled.
He struggled to keep up with her longer strides but found a pace. Mikasa and Armin hurried after. They sprinted as fast as their legs would carry them, past houses, and people, and towards safety.
Hannes met them near the shopping district.
"Carla!" he exclaimed, surprised. He spied the kids and sighed with relief. "Thank goodness you're all safe."
"Hannes." Carla gasped, her breathing labored. "The wall, it's-"
"Yeah, I know." Hannes replied grim-faced. He straightened, serious. His clothes were dirty, a blade in each hand. "Come on, let's get you on one of those evacuation ships."
He sat quietly next to Armin and Mikasa, his mother watching over them, talking in hushed tones with Armin's grandpa. The elderly man had been waiting by the docks when they arrived, having refused to board until his grandson arrived.
Hannes had watched them board, then run off to reinforce the gate.
They floated slowly towards the interior of wall Rose.
"Eren." Armin whispered quietly, and he and Mikasa both turned questioningly.
"...H-How... How did you know to run for your house?" He stammered; brows scrunched in puzzlement. "I mean- there was no way you could've known the wall would be breached. But... one second, we were talking, and the next thing I knew, you were running like crazy. As- As if you knew."
Eren let his gaze drop to the deck. How had he known? He'd felt a rush of pain in the back of his head, and then he'd just... started seeing stuff.
'That blond titan... And the rock on our house... I saw them- saw them before they even happened. But how's that possible! How do I even explain it? As dreams? Seeing the future?'
But it was more than just seeing, he'd felt it. A deep, dark, pit of dread had opened up in his stomach. And that voice. That tiny, far-away voice in the back of his mind. It had urged him, plead for him to move. And he'd known instinctively that he'd regret it if he didn't.
"Eren?"
He was broken out of his thoughts by Mikasa's soft, worried whisper, and realized belatedly that he'd been silent for a while.
"I... I don't know, Armin... I just... had a feeling..."
Armin stared at him in disbelief. "... You had a feeling that the wall would be breached for the first time in a hundred years?"
It sounded ridiculous when he put it like that. Yet he couldn't explain it either.
He shrugged. "I felt like something bad was about to happen. And the first thing that came to mind was mom."
Armin nodded slowly, not buying it, but letting it slide, and they lapsed into silence. Eren kept his head down over his arms, knees tucked in, listening to everything around him. The parting of water, the gentle rocking of the boat, the creaking of wood, the hushed whispers and cries of people forced from their homes.
The distant shouts and rumblings of battle were slowing fading away.
That was, until it came again. Lightning struck for the second time that day. His head shot up and he met Armin and Mikasa's terrified faces. He stood abruptly and ran to the rail, his friends on his heels, and stared out over the gate separating Maria from Shiganshina.
Everyone was quiet, holding their breaths, waiting for the inevitable.
.
.
Nothing. No massive head poking over the wall.
Eren's eyes came down to the gate itself and the soldiers manning it.
He squinted, trying to get a better look.
The gate was closing rapidly, and soldiers were running away from it.
"... What's going on, why're they running?"
*CRASH!*
Not a second later, the gate exploded.
Rocks and people alike were shot out of the resulting dust-cloud, and through came a titan.
A goliath of a titan, muscled, and bedecked in stone-like armor, its yellow eyes glowing menacingly, its form illuminated by the light coming through the hole it'd made in wall Maria.
It straightened, unruffled, as if it hadn't just doomed half of humanity, then walked out the same way it had come.
Mikasa and Armin stared. Eren gaped.
AN:
Yo, I'm back guys.
It's been a while. Pretty short chapter, but they'll get longer after a while.
Hope you like it!
~Zenix404~