The Fight for Mankind

The Fall of Rose

REINER

The recruits of the 104th bar Jean, Armin, Mikasa and Eren all sat in the mess hall of Survey HQ in a dress downs waiting for someone to tell us what the hell was going on, not that they would, they certainly hadn't told us about the 57th expedition so why would they tell us what was happening now.

Something is wrong, I can feel it.

The cloak and dagger routine was only adding to my annoyance because even though I was trying to focus on the game of chess before me with Bertolt, all my mind could do was go over and over how quickly our plan had gone to shit.

Annie was supposed to grab Eren with minimal fuss, and then we would have been on our way home to discover if he was actually the coordinate or not, but of course, things didn't go to plan and Eren escaped, and to top it off, Annie had attacked Aurora when I had explicitly asked her not too.

The redhaired woman had saved my life, and I had only thought it fair that she spared, a life for a life, but it was also more than that. What Aurora and her brother can do has never been seen before, even back home, and when Aurora had touched my skin during Trost, I had felt this weird tingling feeling all over my body that I had felt only once before when our war chief had shaken my hand after my first transformation. I had known then that Aurora and Rian were different and as such, I had proposed that if we could, we should take them with us when we returned home but that had been met by protests and accusations from Bertolt when he had insinuated that my personal feelings for Aurora were clouding my judgement, which was not the case at all.

I mean sure Aurora was easily one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen with her haunting eyes that even where I come from would be seen as exotic and damn, the way she used words to ignite a fire in the hardest of hearts was a massive turn on but if what I felt for her was more than lust like Bertolt implied then I wouldn't have suggested she come back to our homeland with us, not when upon arrival she would likely become a test subject and dissected on a metal table for the good of the empire.

No, I had suggested it because I knew in my bones, she was something important, her brother too and when it came down to it, we would have to take her and her brother into the equation if we ever had a shot at taking Eren home without bloodshed. 

It's a shame, Aurora really has the beginnings of a hero figure for these people, like the tales of Helos except much easier on the eyes.

"You know my village just happens to be a little bit south of where we are now." Connie drawled beside me, bringing my head back to the game at hand which I was losing.

"The town where I'm from is pretty close too." Sasha sighed as she gazed dead-eyed out the window in utter boredom.

"Why can't I go see my people?" Connie groused before sighing and scratching his head, "Maybe I'll just sneak out after dark."

Now there's an idea, if I could sneak out with Connie then maybe I could finally figure out what the hell is going on here and maybe find Eren's whereabouts too.

"My people told me not to bother coming back till I'm normal so..." Sasha shrugged as I mulled over the benefits of following through on sneaking out with Connie.

It's the perfect excuse, if we're caught then nobody would suspect an ulterior motive, just two boys wanting to make their way home.

"Well folks back when I was growing up were always telling me I was too puny to be a soldier, and look at me now, I made it in the top ten of my class! I'm telling you someone is going to be eating their words when I get back home" Connie promised, and I made up my mind.