victory_road | Friday the thirteenth doesn't usually get this whacky

I'm... not exactly sure. It was something with generating enough thrust that even something as heavy as a metal airship stays up. I wish I could explain it better.

I have some pictures though.

[Armin quickly retrieves his gear, scrolling through to get to the pictures he made in Sinnoh. Which includes the first couple of many pictures he took at the airport and of the plane and inside the plane because it had been super fascinating to him.

Also included is a few pictures of Angel, one in which she is sleeping on his shoulder.]

See.

[Erwin leans over Armin's shoulder, just as interested in those pictures of the plane as Armin must have been when he first saw it. That's some incredible technology, and if he's going to be in this world, Erwin wants to see it for himself.]

[He also notices the girl, and how she appears in more than one picture. At first, he assumes it's Mikasa Ackerman, since he's so used to seeing her with Armin and Eren, but no, this is another dark-haired girl. He points to her image on the screen.]

Who's this? She's been in a few of your pictures.

[His tone is light, gently teasing.]

[Armin flushes a little.]

Ah, uhm, that's Angel. She's my... she's my girlfriend.

[Armin manages to sound both slightly embarrassed and still a lot dazed by the concept of having a girlfriend. Especially one as adorable and sweet and perfect as Angel.]

Is she, now?

[Erwin kind of assumed that, based on the pictures Armin has shown him, but it's always nice to be proven right. As much as he wants to keep talking about technology, this is clearly important to Armin, so they can get a little sidetracked here.]

Tell me about her.

[He flushes darker. It's embarrassing talking to Erwin about this subject. He's always admired him for his ability to strategies and command. To talk about his girlfriend with him now is very strange. Especially when he is essentially a stranger to him.]

I met her in this world. She is very kind and gentle, and the world she comes from is far more advanced than ours, so she is incredible when it comes to any sort of technology. [Guess who fixes Armin's laptop each time it does something weird that makes him panic? ] There was also a lot she couldn't see back home, so now we are trying to see as many new things as we can together.

She sounds lovely.

[Erwin is glad Armin has had a chance to do this, because he knows their world would never allow for such. Kind and gentle tends to not survive where they're from, especially not in the Survey Corps.]

She reached out to me yesterday, using the device. She asked about you and Kirstein.

[Erwin has no idea just how lovely she is. And how sweet. And how supportive. But Armin doesn't sing her praises more than he already has done. Mostly cause he doesn't want to turn into That Person.]

That makes sense. She was close to Jean too before he went home.

[It's a little known secret that Erwin is totally That Person himself, and is indulgent of other people going on about their significant others. But Armin clearly doesn't know that, hasn't been afforded the privilege of listening to Erwin rattle on about Captain Levi, so he won't push the issue. Besides, Armin has said something else that catches his attention.]

Has Jean been here twice? I wasn't aware that people could come and go from this place.

[At this point, Armin only know Captain Levi as a living legend. To hear Erwin wax sweet about him would be highly disconcerting.]

He has.

The first time he was here, he arrived alongside me. He was actually here for several years before he went back to our world. When he arrived here again, he was older and unfortunately didn't remember anything about his previous stay here. Sometimes people do remember, but usually, they don't. It's hard to say why that is.

[Erwin could tell Armin all sorts of things about the living legend that Levi would hate anyone else knowing.]

Has anyone else from our world come and gone? Or also lives here?

[He can't help but hope that Mike, or Nanaba, or any of the other countless Survey Corps soldiers who fell under his orders ended up here.]

Several people yes.

Sasha -- ah, Sasha Braus, another member of the 104th -- is still here, but others have been here in the past. Eren arrived here just ater I did but he went back to our world after a few months. Marco was here for almost a year.

[A pause then he adds.]

The Female titan Annie Leonheart and the Colossal titan Bertolt Hoover have been here too. Though both have returned to our world.

[Erwin has no idea who Marco is, but he recognizes those other names.]

The titans were here? Did they exist peacefully with everyone else?

[Tell him more about this; he might be dead, but the urge to get intel has clearly not left him.]

First, I should mention that while they were here, most of us were completely unaware of their other identities.

As such, it was possible for Bertolt-- The Colossal Titan to remain undercover, the same as he had been during our time in the training corps. None of us suspected a thing, and seeing as this world robs people of their powers, there were few ways we could've uncovered his secret.

As for Annie-- When I arrived here I already had a suspicion that she was the Female Titan, though I didn't share it with the others. [Too concerned about being wrong. Maybe hoping too much he was wrong.] When she arrived here, the two of us made a deal. I would keep her secret in exchange for our safety. I-- I don't know if she would've acted against us. She was at a huge disadvantage, but I thought it was best not to take any chances.

Though after learning Bertolt was the Colossal Titan, her cooperation probably had something to do with that as well.

[Erwin nods; he remembers that it had been Armin who'd pieced together who the Female Titan was, and who had helped them track down the Colossal and the Armored. It's still amazing to him that they'd managed to exist out of sight for so long, that they'd been so successful infiltrating the military, and that even he'd been taken in by them. He'd liked the Braun kid, dammit, had thought he'd had the potential to be a valuable soldier, and so it's not surprising that they'd been able to exist here without attracting attention.]

Did you ever learn anything about their motives?

[He knows about Marley now, thanks to Jean, but the young trio's motives remain a mystery to him. Sure, Founding Titan, recovering titan powers, but why? Why spend so long undercover, and rise so high through the ranks, when a simple, brutal attack would have served just as well?]

I did. Some from Annie, and more from Jean. Admittedly, I got a lot of this stuff secondhand, but I think it lines up with what Annie told me.

[He pauses, and he must ask because he has no idea exactly what Erwin knows already and it certainly won't make sense without some basic knowledge.]

I'm not sure exactly what you know already, sir -- did you hear anything about Marley at all?

Kirstein mentioned it, and explained the basics.

[And it kills Erwin that the outside world was there, right under their noses, the whole time, and he didn't live to see it.]

He said they were using titans as weapons of war.

They do. Marley had control of seven of the nine titan shifters for a very long time, and through that, they were able to dominate over the rest of the world for a very long time.

But they were starting to lose their edge as the rest of the world progressed technologically, and they needed the natural resources in Paradise to retain their edge. The only thing standing in their way was the Founding Titan, which was being held by the Reiss family, so a mission was launched to retrieve it, and through it, the resources on our island.

[Erwin makes a quiet humming sound in his throat, and takes his time responding. It's a repeat of what Jean had told him, but he's had more time to mull it over now.]

So conflict with the greater world would have been inevitable, regardless of whether the Colossal and Armored had attacked. All their attack did was speed up what was already coming.

[Erwin knows all about scrapping over resources, and how ugly those battles can get.]

In a way, their failed attack did us a favor. We had a warning, and some time to plan our defenses.

In a strange way, what saved us was the fact they sent children. When their original plan fell apart, they had to start improvising. They could only do so much.

[Armin shakes his head. It's why he can't hold these things against Annie and the others. Not anymore, not since he found out the truth. They may have carried out the plan, but they had not been the architects of it.]

Edited 2020-12-22 04:26 (UTC)

Why did they send children? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Beast titan seemed... older. Like he would have strategized differently, and made better choices.

[The Beast titan was always more cruel than the other three, which makes Erwin think he's older. Children and recruits can be nasty to each other, but the kind of calculated, heartless cruelty the Beast titan has exhibited seems more indicative of age.]

Friday the thirteenth doesn't usually get this whacky

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