Creation began on 04-30-22
Creation ended on 01-28-23
Attack on Titan
The Silent Corps: Results
A/N: When you don't put in the effort to get what you're really after, what you end up getting may be worse than what you were expecting to get.
The night was really quiet and felt like a long journey from Wall Maria to wherever this path they were on took them to. Even with torches and candles and handheld lanterns, it was still a world of unknown dangers that the Silent Corps were wandering into. The horses weren't startled by anything, but the soldiers were wondering when the Titans would appear and set them off, despite the knowledge that they were less active during the night than they were during the day. It was understandable that there was a high degree of fear of being killed by the Titans, but they were employing a new tactic that promised a change from their previously-used tactics that gave less-than-favorable results. Less than hopeful ones.
"It feels like we've been walking forever," said one of the last recruits from the Cadet Corps that chose to join the Survey Corps and was fortunate enough to survive an encounter with the Titans, holding a lantern to light the way forward.
"It's only been three hours," a woman responded, a fellow classmate from the Cadet Corps that chose the Survey Corps; as of late, she was starting to reconsider that joining the Garrison would've been a better choice because she wouldn't have been a walking target out in the open. "But, yeah, it does feel like a long time since we left the Walls."
"Halt!" The woman with the goggles ordered, and everyone stopped as a lantern's light shone on something to their right, against a tree. "Titan! Eight meters!"
Some of the soldiers panicked, but Levi approached the eight-meter Titan and raised a blade up to it. It didn't react to their presence, even though there were plenty of them present around it. Sitting there against the tree, looking like a buffoon, eyes glazed over, the Titan showed no trace of any awareness.
"It's alright," he told them. "Let's keep moving."
They went past the Titan, finding at least fourteen others, each between two-fourteen meters in height, completely inactive and unaware of their small existence. Even though it was night, it still felt like danger was all around them.
-x-
The doctors said she was lucky to have survived having a knife in her back, but she felt like someone was trying to send her a message or a warning of sorts. As she lay in bed, unable to turn onto her back or she would impair her injury until she healed a few days later, Alma was forced to look at the empty cot beside her right.
"You know what I can't stand about most parents these days?" She heard a voice say, similar to the one she heard before when she was injured, and saw someone come to sit on the cot beside her. "I can't stand how there some parents that will exploit their children whenever they have a situation they wish to manipulate to their own liking…but what I also don't tolerate much of from people that enter into the family way are the parents that willfully, spitefully, ignore their own children, as though they were victimized by them…just for existing. It just makes me sick to my stomach, knowing that there are people like that, like you, out there, with children…and you treat them like this."
"Who are you?" She asked him, not recognizing him from anywhere.
"Oh, me? I'm just a nobody that enjoys helping somebody else that can turn their life around if given a chance to. I am the whispers in the day and the night. The stranger that sees the world for what it is and what it can be. The crusader for justice and redemption."
"That…doesn't really say much about you."
"Do you believe in innocence…Alma?"
"How do you know my name?"
"Answer the question first to receive the answer. Do you believe in innocence?"
"No. I don't."
"That's a pity, really. As to how I know your name, I know everything about you; I know about your affair with Rod Reiss, that you have a daughter with him that you see as a burden, which makes me question your very right to exist, and I even know that, despite being a surviving twin of your parents' three children, two of which died more than ten years ago, you have always been viewed as the incorrigible one, unwilling to admit or accept that your faults can be atoned for."
"I'm a victim here."
"Oh, please, there's only one victim right now…and just because you had a knife thrown into your back, that doesn't make you a victim. It doesn't make you a victim by a long shot. Your daughter is the victim. She's your victim. Their victim…and you hate her just for existing. So I don't like you for choosing to believe in that awful notion…and I will rectify this inhumanity of yours, one way or another, to ensure that she gets a better life. Better than what you could hope for yourself."
"She's not a victim."
"Says you…and I can tell who's a victim and who's a villain."
Alma then noticed that this stranger, this dark-skinned man that seemed to be a nonentity with no ties to anyone here, had a strange, curved blade in his hands, turning it over several times and looked like he was using it to clean one of his fingernails.
"Are you here to kill me?" She asked him.
"No," he answered, and stood up. "I'm not a believer of unnecessary bloodshed. That makes me sick to my stomach…and I'll own up to it. I won't cross the line between life and death unless every other option has been exhausted…and I'm always looking for alternatives to outright murder. So you can relax. If you can. I won't kill you. But this isn't the last that you've seen of me, Alma."
He then got up and walked away.
"What? What do you mean?" She asked him.
"There is a price to be paid for negligence, and you will pay for it until you can't pay any further," she heard him say.
She tried to raise up to see him, but he was already gone.
"You shouldn't try to get up yet," a female nurse told her as she came over to set her back onto her pillow.
"Did…did you see the man that was just here?" Alma questioned.
"What are you talking about? There was no man here?"
Alma looked the other way, and all she could see were some other women that had been injured or were walking around for rehabilitation. Did she imagine all of that…or was there something else going on?
-x-
"…So, nobody's taking responsibility for the buildings that were destroyed?" A Marleyan general questioned, having heard of the four buildings across Liberio that were set ablaze just a few days ago. "Could it have been the Eldians?"
"No, sir," a soldier explained. "One of the buildings burned down was located inside the internment zone, but the other three were just outside the zone, and in different parts of the city. Even if it had been a coordinated attack, it just seems too random and unusual. Why attack empty buildings? And there's something else, too. The buildings that were destroyed…were all scheduled to be taken down within months of each other due to structural problems. That's why they were empty."
"Are we sure that Eldians were not involved?"
"We can't find a link between the buildings being destroyed and any Eldians being involved. There's no connection, whatsoever, sir. I'm convinced that Eldians had nothing to do with this."
"Then who the Hell is responsible?"
"Maybe we're looking for an old wives tale," another soldier expresses.
"What? What is that supposed to mean?"
All eyes were on the soldier who spoke, and he became nervous.
"About eight years ago, when I was stationed in a different town, there were people from foreign parts of the world that were telling stories they heard from other people from other places, and some of these stories revolved around a man. A stranger that wanders in and out of places and lives. The stories are puzzling, but some of them have similarities between them, and one was how the stranger was seen as some sort of bringer of change. Some saw him as a monster, others saw him as a saint. He walked the line between right and wrong. A tormentor and a savior, a friend and an enemy, hope and despair."
"What kind of people tell stories like that?" A different general questions.
"People that believe in the stories. Possibly even those that have seen this man before. But if these are grounded in reality, then the stranger in question can't be alive."
"Why is that?"
"Because one of the women that told her story heard about it from her grandmother, over forty years ago, and a man that told a different story heard about him from his father, who heard about him from his grandfather, over eighty-eight years ago. These stories about this one man, told from places that have never been able to visit one another until ships were built, in languages that were unspoken or for generations, in various cultures, in various ways… If they're all about the same person, he'd be over a thousand years old. Maybe more."
"An old wives tale, indeed. Do any of these stories tell of this man's name?"
"One of them."
"One of them?"
"He had a lot of them, which may be the same identity spoken in different languages. Some people from the south call him Jilata Corrección. Some from places like Hizuru call him Burazā Teisei or Hooponopono Kaikuaana. There's a woman currently living in Liberio from elsewhere in the east, and she may know the actual name…"
"Wait a minute," a third soldier went. "I recognize the first name. All these different designations translate into the same name: Brother Correction."
"Brother Correction?"
-x-
As the sun slowly rose over the horizon, the Silent Corps had reached their destination without any loss of life in their formation, and despite seeing many more Titans where they walked, the hours without sunlight had left them unable to act until they had been rejuvenated by soaking up the sunlight. But what had been the most amazing feat they had accomplished within the travel of the night…was the grandiose sight of the ocean, a place they had never seen before.
"What…is this water?" The girl with goggles had wondered aloud. "A lake?"
"It can't be a lake," Levi responded, having more sense than most. "It's massive and spreads farther than any lake I've ever seen."
"It's beautiful," one of the last recruits from a year ago expressed. "I don't know why…but it's just…beautiful."
"Yes, it is," said Erwin as he gazed out at the ocean. We did it, Father. We got far from the Walls, farther than we ever thought we could, and we made it here, wherever here is. We did it.
-x-
Squatting in an alley in Liberio's internment zone, Brother Correction couldn't help but smile as he looked through a red crystal sphere in his left hand, gazing at the recently-formed Silent Corps standing on the beach, looking out at the beauty of the ocean, a reward in its own right. He was proud of their success, because it was a success; they went in the night and made it safely across the terrain, with no loss of life. This was the first of many rewards that awaited them, and he would stick around to be in awe of their accomplishments.
"Knowledge, wisdom, love, friendship, hope, sincerity, sympathy, understanding, perseverance," he uttered as he closed his hand over the crystal sphere. "Don't you think that these gifts that are known to many…but only embraced by fewer than few…wondrous gifts that can change the world when the people that embrace them are given a chance to make or break what is and what can be…Ms. Fritz?"
He looked to his right, away from the streets, at a young girl in rags with a gloomy look on her face. Behind her, it was though a tree of light stood in a vast desert in the night; only he could see this phenomenon because he was addressing her spirit, which continued to reside in the realm she stumbled upon when she first obtained the power to change the world. Her silence spoke a measure of volumes that weren't lost to him, and he sighs.
"I promise you change," he tells her, "and with this change will come redemption, and with this redemption will come renewal from the darkness of the past. You can see it, can't you, Ms. Fritz? The world changing in ways that are different from what you once saw as an inescapable fate?"
Again, the girl said nothing, but her silence indicated something else entirely different.
"Two months from now, another boon will be given to one who can help redeem the future and absolve the past of your pain," he let her know, "and a year from now, beyond the world of tomorrow…you will be granted a gift that only few can appreciate. That is what you want, is it not, Ms. Fritz?"
She walked towards him and places her left hand on his right knee. With her right hand, she points to her chest, right over her heart.
"I promise you," he assures her. "You will never have to bear this unjust weight upon your shoulders again. A year from now. I look forward to the day."
And then…she was gone, leaving him alone in the alley.
"I'm a man of my word," he told himself. "My word is my blessing and my curse."
To be continued…
A/N: I hope that within the next few days, Eva Art Online will be updated Modern Day Legend of a Rage-filled Anchor. To those still reading my works, I thank you for being patient with me. Until the next update, stay safe, active and creative. Peace.