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Afternoon…
Trost's Market district square was a symphony of chaotic life: fishwives screaming about the dubious freshness of their cod, a donkey staging a stubborn sit-in, a merchant hawking "genuine Titan-bone charms" that were clearly carved ox femur. A mundane atmosphere of business.
In the middle of this organized bedlam, Eren had unfortunately become a singularity of pent-up, frustrated energy. Having narrowly avoided giving Hannes a coronary earlier that morning with an ill-timed Savage transformation in his flat, they'd been confiscated to the market to wait. Hannes had to report for his mandatory Garrison roll-call, latrine-duty demotion or not, and he'd refused to leave "a walking biological hazard" unsupervised in his home again.
"You will wait. By the fountain. You will be normal. You will not sniff people. You will not turn blue and zoom around. You will be boring," he'd instructed, his face still pale from the earlier "giant orange dog" incident, before vanishing towards the northern barracks.
That was over an hour ago.
Now, Eren was wearing a circular path in the dust beside a vegetable cart, pacing like a caged, feral cat.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Each lap was a circuit of his mounting frustration. He'd tried being productive. The moment Hannes was out of sight, he'd transformed into Blitz and zipped through the back alleys. It was a disaster. And as Armin had actually predicted, the sensory overload was immense. His super-speed perception turned the city into a slow-motion avalanche of conflicting imageries. The unique, alien signature he was hunting for was utterly drowned out. He'd timed out behind a stack of crates, frustrated and no wiser.
Armin sat on an overturned crate nearby, legs crossed, his nose buried in a dog-eared book titled Basic Principles of Cartography borrowed from the Garrison library. Every thirty seconds, he'd glance up at Eren's furious pacing, sigh a sigh that carried the weight of the world's logical fallacies no matter how much he had told his best friend to calm down, and return to his page.
Mikasa stood a few paces away, arms folded, her grey eyes tracking a flock of pigeons on a nearby rooftop as they pecked on the grains there.
Eren's pacing reached a critical, decision-making velocity. He skidded to a halt.
"That's it," he announced, his voice tight. "I'm doing it. A full perimeter sweep. All of Wall Rose. As Blitz. Ten minutes, tops. I'll be back before Hannes finishes yelling at the duty sergeant."
Armin didn't look up. "You're not."
"I am!"
"You'll get lost," Mikasa stated, her eyes sliding to him, flat and final. "The Omnitrix will time out at any given time and you will be a small, human ten-year-old, miles away from the nearest road. I am not walking that far to retrieve you."
Eren opened his mouth, a protest on his lips, then deflated. He hated when her tactical critique was aimed at his own bad ideas. "...I hate when you make sense," he grumbled, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and resuming his pacing, now in the opposite direction, muttering creative curses under his breath that would have made Captain Levi raise an impressed eyebrow.
It was at this precise moment, as Eren pivoted on his heel for the hundredth time, that fate; a cruel and ironic playwright; decided to intervene.
Jean Kirstein, age ten, aspirant to the Military Police, was navigating the market with his best friend, Marco Bodt. Jean's mother had sent him for onions and "something green that isn't moldy." Marco, the loyal strategist, had come along because Jean's mom always gave an extra sweet bun to the boy who carried the heavier bag.
Jean was in mid-explanation of a recent playground triumph when his forward momentum met Eren's backward-traveling frustration.
"—and then I told him if he didn't shut his trap, I'd kick his teeth so far down his throat he'd have to—"
THUD.
Shoulder met shoulder with a solid whump. Jean's paper bag tore. A cascade of small onions erupted into the air. One particularly spherical and assertive onion performed a perfect arc and bonked Eren squarely on the forehead.
"Gah!" Eren stumbled back, clutching his head. "Oi! Watch where you're—!" Eren stopped as he found himself looking up (annoyingly so) at a boy about his age with neatly styled, straw-colored hair and narrow, perpetually unimpressed hazel eyes. He had a sharp face that was currently twisted in a scowl.
Jean after catching himself against the vegetable cart, turned, and snapped at Eren. "What's your problem, walking backwards like a blind calf?"
"My problem is people who don't look where they're going!" Eren shot back, his own frustration finding a perfect outlet. "This is a public square, not your personal hallway!"
"I was looking! You were the one stomping around like you owned the place! Typical."
"Typical what?"
The other boy's friend, a freckled, kind-faced boy with dark hair, stepped between them with a pacifying smile. "Whoa, hey, it was an accident. Nobody's fault. Right, Jean?"
Jean ignored him, and was ready to unleash the most scathing ten-year-old invective Trost had to offer. Until a new party intervened.
Mikasa placed herself slightly between Eren and Jean. Her grey eyes, cool and assessing, fixed on Jean. "What is the problem?" she asked, her voice flat.
Jean's brain, already mid-reboot from the collision, now short-circuited completely. His initial surge of defensive anger; back the hell up, this isn't your business; hit a wall and evaporated. The girl standing before him had hair like spilled ink, eyes the colour of a winter sky, and a presence that felt less like a person and more like a natural law. Staring at this scowling brunette had been infuriating. Staring at her was… impossible.
Hair like spilled ink, eyes the colour of a winter sky moments before a storm, and an expression so calmly, utterly lethal it seemed to lower the temperature of the entire square. She was looking directly at him, and Jean's young brain did a full systems reboot.
His face executed a stunning chromatic shift from pale to incendiary tomato-red in 0.3 seconds. All higher cognitive functions ceased.
"Uh," he said, a masterpiece of eloquence lost. Whatever retort he had in mind died and unborn.
Marco awkwardly filled the stunned silence. "Sorry! Total accident! Here, let me get those." He began scurrying after the rolling onions.
Eren who had stopped rubbing the new bump on his forehead and incensed by both the vegetable-based assault and Jean's sudden, dumbstruck staring, was a live wire. "Yeah, well, tell your friend to stop gawking like a total creep!"
The word "creep" jolted Jean's system back online, though in safe mode. "I wasn't staring at you, you shrimpy little—!"
"Who are you calling shrimp, you horse-faced—"
"Eren." Mikasa's voice cut through. One word. Calm. Implacable. It had the effect of a blade being quietly drawn.
Eren's jaw snapped shut, but his green eyes promised arson.
Jean, meanwhile, saw an opportunity for recovery…or at least to salvage a shred of dignity in front of her. He straightened his tunic, ran a hand through his hair (a futile gesture against Trost's humidity), and aimed what he hoped was a confident, charming smile at Mikasa.
"Hey. Uh. Hi. I'm Jean. You new around here? 'Cause I definitely would've noticed if you—"
Eren took a decisive step forward, placing himself squarely back in Jean's line of sight like a very small, very furious human shield. "She's with us. Back off."
Jean's eyebrow climbed. This shrimp had nerve. "Relax. I'm just being polite. Saying hello."
"'Hello' is four letters. You've used thirty-seven. You're being weird."
Armin closed his book with a soft, definitive thud. "I think we should all just take a breath and—"
Too late. The die was cast.
Jean, pride and burgeoning pre-teen ego stung, took a challenging step forward. Eren, whose entire day had been an exercise in frustration, met him halfway.
They were now nose-to-nose; or rather, nose-to-forehead, given the slight height difference; two bristling bundles of righteous indignation.
Marco grabbed Jean's sleeve. "Jean, come on, it's not worth it—"
Mikasa's hand shot out. She didn't grab Eren's arm. Five fingers closed with delicate, unbreakable precision on the back of his collar, and she lifted him an inch clear off the cobblestones. Eren dangled, momentarily stunned, like an angry, scrappy kitten plucked from a fight.
"No," Mikasa stated.
Eren flailed. "He started it!"
"I was being polite!" Jean insisted, his gaze flicking between the dangling Eren and the girl holding him with terrifying ease.
"You were being a creep!"
As the standoff reached its peak, a large, weary shadow fell over the group.
Hannes stood there, having returned from the barracks just in time for the matinee. He held his Garrison jacket in one hand and looked at the scene before him: scattered onions, Marco in a half-crouch of apology, two red-faced boys in a stalemate of rage and embarrassment, Mikasa holding Eren aloft, and Armin looking heavenward as if seeking divine intervention.
Hannes closed his eyes for a three-count. He took a long, slow breath, then exhaled it as a sigh that seemed to drain the last of his will to live.
"What," he said, his voice dangerously calm, "in the name of the Walls, King fritz, and my dwindling sanity… is going on here?"
The sound of his voice; the voice of a Garrison soldier who had seen things and clearly regretted most of them; froze Jean and Marco. Eren, still dangling, jutted his chin out.
"He hit me with an onion!" Eren accused.
"It was an accident! And he called me horse-faced!"
"You are!"
Hannes's gaze swept from Jean to Eren, to Mikasa, and back. He rubbed his temples where a headache was blooming with apocalyptic fervor.
"Right," he said, the word tasting of resignation. "Everybody. Breathe. You two," he pointed at Jean and Marco, "go. Buy your onions. Your mothers are waiting. You," he pointed at Eren, "put your pointing finger away before you poke someone's eye out. And you," he looked at Mikasa, "for the love of all that's holy, put the kid down. He's not a purse."
Mikasa lowered Eren with the same care one might use to set down a potentially explosive device. Eren straightened his shirt with wounded, immense dignity.
Jean, flushed with a mixture of lingering anger and the profound humiliation of being scolded in front of her, muttered an incoherent sound that might have contained the skeleton of an apology. Marco, ever-diplomatic, gave a quick, awkward bow. "S-sorry for the trouble! Nice to, uh, meet you…?"
He then firmly steered a grumbling Jean away into the market throng. Jean cast one last, lingering, utterly confused look over his shoulder at Mikasa before disappearing.
The moment they were gone, Hannes rounded on his trio. He leaned in, his voice a low, intense whisper.
"I leave you alone for one hour. To get a duty report. And I come back to find you half a second from a market brawl over… over onion-based assault?" He looked at Eren. "What is wrong with you?"
Eren, still vibrating with residual fury, crossed his arms and glared in the direction Jean had vanished. "I hate that guy."
Hannes stared. He blinked slowly. "You… hate him. You've known the kid for ninety seconds."
"Long enough," Eren muttered darkly.
Armin, seeking to defuse the second bomb of the afternoon, patted Eren's shoulder. "He did have a point about the 'hello' thing being excessively long."
"See?"
Hannes took a long, long pull of his bearded face, not even bothering to hide his stress this time. "Inside," he ordered, jerking his thumb toward the alley leading to his flat. "Now. Before you attract the MPs. Or worse, his mother."
As they trudged after him, Eren kicked a loose cobblestone, sending it clattering.
"I still hate him," he reaffirmed to the world.
A tiny, almost imperceptible twitch touched the corner of Mikasa's lips. It was there and gone in a flash.
Hannes, leading the way, didn't look back. "You can add him to the list after the soul-sucking ghost and the phase-shifting demon dog," he grumbled. "Priorities, kid. Priorities."
But as they retreated from the sun-drenched square, Hannes's expression, once they were inside the relative privacy of his cramped rooms, was grim.
"The duty report was useless. Official channels have been quiet lately. Too quiet," he said, lowering his voice. "But I heard a whisper from a sergeant who's not a complete idiot. Garrison patrols have been quietly doubled throughout everywhere. No explanation. Just 'precautionary measures.'" He met Eren's now-focused gaze.
"When the military moves without a reason they're willing to share, it's usually because the real reason is something they don't want you to know."
Eren's restless energy crystallized instantly into a sharp, clear purpose. The frustration, the fight with the horse-faced boy, the waiting; all of it burned away in the heat of a real clue.
"There has to be a central district," he breathed. "Where?"
"That's what we need to find out. Most likely the main southern garrison post for Trost's outer wall sector. That's where any mobilization orders would have come from, and where any reports of… weirdness… would get sent." Hannes grabbed his worn jacket. "I've got a face they know, even if they don't like it. I can get us in, ask some pointed questions, maybe peek at a dispatch board if the duty officer is taking a nap."
"So we're going to a Garrison post?" Armin asked, a flicker of anxiety in his eyes. "Directly into the military's nerve center?"
"Better than wandering around the entire southern territory hoping to stumble over a monster," Hannes grunted.
"We get a location, a direction. Then your…" he waved a hand vaguely at Eren's wrist, "…specialized skills come into play. But we do it smart. You three are my, uh… distant nieces and nephew. Visited from Jinae. Lost your pet dog. A big one. Very distinctive. Heard rumors. You get the picture."
Eren nodded, his mind already racing ahead to the moment he could transform and act. "Let's go."
As they slipped back out into the late afternoon light, their path now set towards the military heart of southern Trost, they were operating on a single, fragile whisper. To them, the threat was a phantom somewhere in the vast, rural south. Their destination was a garrison wall post, a place of bureaucracy and bored soldiers, hoping for a scrap of truth in a world of official silence.
Chapter 26-31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.