With a sizzling sound, the tremendous noise of steam vaporizing rang out.
"Squad Leader Vige! Come look! Th-this, how is this possible?" A voice reached Yago's ears.
Yago's mind was a chaotic blur. He struggled to open his eyes, but it was as if they were glued shut.
"What's wrong? What's so interesting about a Titan corpse?" Another voice sounded, followed by the sound of footsteps.
Yago felt someone approaching him. He wanted to speak, wanted to open his eyes, but his entire body had no strength at all. Gradually, his consciousness grew more and more hazy, until it finally fell into darkness.
...
Outside, in a lush forest, many towering trees lay toppled on the ground, as if something had rampaged through. On the ground were massive bodies, shaped like humans, yet visibly dissolving before the naked eye.
These Titans' bodies were evaporating like water. Each Titan had a huge wound at the back of its neck, as if severed by a sharp weapon.
On the ground were not only Titan corpses, but also many shattered human bodies. They wore green cloaks, had strange mechanical devices at their waists, and held blades as sharp as box cutters in their hands.
On the dark green cloaks was a shield-shaped emblem, interwoven with two blue-and-white wings.
If any real-world Titan fan were here, they would surely scream upon recognizing this as the famous Survey Corps! And this world, naturally, was the world of Attack on Titan!
Vige was a veteran of the Survey Corps, with brown hair and stubble around his mouth proving that he was no longer young. Vige had joined the Survey Corps in the year 835.
It was now the year 845. After the new commander of the Survey Corps, Erwin, took office, he launched the 38th expedition beyond the walls and employed a brand-new formation—the Long-Range Enemy Scouting Formation—which significantly reduced casualties and greatly boosted the morale of the entire Survey Corps.
Unfortunately, this expedition beyond the walls still yielded no real gains. Even though they advanced farther than in previous expeditions, the Survey Corps still suffered heavy losses.
Vige walked toward his comrade and asked as he went,
"What's wrong? Jiso, did you find something?"
His comrade Jiso stared wide-eyed, fear and shock in his gaze. The Titan corpse before them was rapidly evaporating, but at the back of its neck—originally the Titan's weak point—lay a completely naked black-haired little boy with his eyes closed. The Titan's foul blood and mucus clung to the boy's body, and the slight rise and fall of his chest showed signs of life.
Vige came to Jiso's side and sucked in a sharp breath as well, his face full of disbelief. How could there be a human inside a Titan's body?
Vige Squad was an ordinary squad of the Survey Corps, with former elite member Vige serving as the squad leader. Their squad had originally been responsible for scouting the right flank, but suddenly encountered a surprise attack from one Abnormal Titan and seven or eight other Titans.
The squad had eighteen members in total. Sixteen were killed in battle, leaving only Squad Leader Vige and soldier Jiso. Just as they were driven into a desperate situation, a strange fifteen-meter-class Titan charged in. It did not attack them, but instead launched a frenzied assault on the other Titans.
The Abnormal Titan that had caused half the squad's casualties died in that Titan's mouth.
After killing the other Titans, that strange Titan also collapsed with a thunderous crash and began to evaporate. Soldier Jiso felt something was odd, so he jumped onto the Titan's corpse and used the blade in his hand to cut open the strange Titan's nape. That was how the scene before them appeared.
Jiso swallowed with difficulty and looked at Vige.
"Squad Leader, th-this child is… a Titan?"
Vige: "This… is unbelievable. How could there be such a child inside a Titan's body? Was he eaten?"
Jiso shook his head and said,
"Squad Leader, that's impossible. We're outside the walls, still far from Wall Maria. How could there be a child here? And this child still has signs of life."
Vige also fell into deep thought.
Jiso: "Squad Leader, should we…?"
Jiso raised his blade. The meaning was obvious—should they eliminate this potential threat connected to the Titans?
Vige did not speak. Jiso hesitated and placed the blade against the child's neck. Just as he was about to act, Vige stopped him.
"Stop! This child might be the hope of our Survey Corps—the hope of understanding the secrets beyond the walls, the hope of understanding the origin of the Titans." Vige said firmly, lifting the boy into his arms as he spoke. Perhaps that strange Titan had saved them earlier.
In any case, Vige's heart was far from calm, and Jiso also let out a breath of relief. If he had really been told to lay a hand on a child who looked only eleven or twelve years old, he wasn't sure he could have done it.
.....
The creaking sound of wooden cart wheels turning echoed on and on. Two tall, powerful horses pulled a flatbed wagon, on which lay the soldiers of Vige Squad who had sacrificed their lives, wrapped in white cloth. Jiso drove the wagon, his mood heavy. Comrades who had shared life and death with him day after day were now reduced to cold corpses—many of them not even complete bodies.
At the front of the wagon, Vige rode on horseback, with a small figure sitting in front of him. The boy wore a shirt and pants that were completely mismatched with his size, clutching a bundle of dry rations and gnawing on them like a hamster. From time to time, when he ate too fast, he would gulp down some water to force it down, looking exactly like a starving ghost.
The little boy, of course, was the awakened Yago.
"Yago, do you really not know at all why you appeared here?" Vige asked helplessly.
Yago swallowed the dry rations in his mouth and rolled his eyes.
"I've already said it dozens of times. I don't know where this place is either. I only remember that my name is Yago Norman."
Of course, Yago was still hiding many secrets. For example, there were very strange memories in his mind—memories in which he lived in a place with many tall buildings. But those memories were extremely vague. Judging by them, he seemed to have undergone what was called transmigration?
Moreover, the language he was speaking now seemed, in those memories, to be called Japanese? Very strange. Yago also had another vague memory—of a crowded place, like a concentration camp in a documentary, where there was always a flash of golden light passing through. In his subconscious, Yago believed that this golden light was very important to him—extremely important!
Seeing that he couldn't get anything out of him, Vige sighed and rubbed Yago's small head.
Yago impatiently dodged away.
"Don't touch my head! It'll make me stop growing!"
Jiso laughed when he heard this and said, "If you don't grow, then you don't grow. In the Survey Corps, there's a short guy who's not tall at all, but his strength is absurdly strong."
Vige: "If Levi hears that, you're dead."
Jiso: "It's fine, it's fine. As long as you don't tell the captain, Squad Leader."
Vige shook his head and smiled helplessly, but when he thought about how only he and Jiso had survived from his squad, sorrow immediately welled up in his heart.
Yago seemed to have lost his memory, knowing nothing about the inside or outside of the walls, so Vige could only slowly tell him about this history.
...
(I am very happy to be working on something new, apart from Naruto and One Piece. I recently rewatched the finale of Attack on Titan and started thinking that this anime could make for a really great fanfic. But let's see how things develop)