The Injury Conundrum

The Trost Incident Pt.2

Annie couldn't believe it.

Well, to be honest she really could, but she'd somewhat already accepted Eren's supposed death, and now here he was, standing in front of her, in titan form.

And holy shit was she glad that she had gotten to see Eren's titan beforehand, although it probably would have been fairly obvious regardless.

His titan was currently still rampaging around the area, slaughtering every titan it came across with a brutality that only Eren Jaeger would have and in some ways it was cathartic.

She knew it was him, it had to be him, because she'd never seen another titan look the way he did, had never seen a titan that held so much emotion, so much rage at well, anything really.

But of course she wasn't the only one to notice this behavior.

"Annie! Annie!" Connie screamed from just a bit ahead of her, still pointing towards Eren's titan (Although he certainly didn't know that it was Eren), "Holy fuck, did you see that titan?"

"Yeah, I...its been killing other titans right?"

"Has it? I just saw it go ham on the one in front of Mikasa, but has it really been killing other titans?"

"Oh, that's um, just what I heard from some others." Annie responded, suddenly realizing something. She knew what Eren's titan looked like, she knew that was Eren and he certainly wasn't dead. She knew that there was no way that titan would purposefully kill humans, but nobody else did.

They all thought that it was some random abnormal who suddenly appeared and was just killing titans. They thought that it could turn on them at some point, and probably would want to get rid of him as soon as he became less useful.

Of course, this wasn't the case and while Annie was grateful that her mission was no longer in such dire jeopardy (and that Eren was alive, although she'd certainly never admit it) in some ways this had made attempting to smuggle Eren out much harder.

The Survey Corps weren't supposed to return until later today, so that put her on a time limit to get things done and get them done quickly but there was one thing that concerned her. One big thing having to do with Eren.

She could still hear him roaring off in the distance, that same cry of rage, and while his movements seemed practiced and calculated to anybody else, she could see the sloppiness in each punch thrown. It was as if he was simply throwing himself at the titans without any thought as to how they would react.

And she'd seen this before.

Not necessarily with fights against mindless titans, but it was one of the things that they drilled into her head during training, her original training.

Eren wasn't in control. He was letting the power of the titans control him, strip him down to the most basic fighting instincts that he could still use effectively then use his body to achieve whatever goal he'd had when he shifted, and predictably it looked as if he had shifted out of rage.

Revenge was the easiest goal to give yourself when you needed to shift, as it would always be there and was a pretty concrete goal, but was also the most dangerous.

It was so easy to just lose yourself, drown in your emotions and power as you realized that this ability allowed you to do what you truly wanted, to get that revenge with nothing but a small cut and a bit of time, but it was never worth it.

They'd drilled that into all of the other shifters' heads as well. That attempting to shift in a rage will cause nothing but destruction and failure because in something as big and powerful as a titan they needed to be able to control themselves.