The human body was never engineered to withstand the sheer, unadulterated violence of Omni-Directional Mobility.
Every time you squeeze the triggers, you are essentially initiating a controlled car crash.
The high-tension steel cables bite into masonry, the pressurized gas violently detonates, and your skeletal structure is subjected to sudden, terrifying spikes of kinetic G-force.
Your spine compresses, your organs shift against your ribcage, and your inner ear frantically tries to process a rapidly shifting center of gravity.
It is physically agonizing.
And I was currently executing these maneuvers while simultaneously functioning as a hyper-vigilant air-traffic controller for six highly traumatized teenagers.
“Nac, your entry angle is too shallow!
You’re bleeding kinetic momentum on your upswings!
Adjust your pitch by three degrees!” I barked, my voice cutting cleanly through the howling wind and the distant, echoing screams of Trost District.
“Mina, stop over-gripping your handles!
You are dumping excess gas into the atmosphere!
Trust the gyroscopes!”
We were a tight, mathematically perfect diamond formation tearing through the smoke-choked sky.
Eren was at the vanguard, his blades drawn, charting our path toward the central military supply depot.
Thomas, Mina, Nac, and Mylius formed the protective shell.
Armin was securely tucked in the absolute center, acting as our navigator.
I held the rear.
I was the kinetic anchor, covering the blind spots, my heavily modified gear hissing with pristine, lethal efficiency.
My brain was a supercomputer running on pure adrenaline and cold, uncompromising logic.
The boundaries of my consciousness had entirely dissolved into a singular, hyper-aware tactical state.
I didn’t have to think to calculate the wind resistance or the structural density of the brick chimneys we used as pivot points.
The topographical geometry of the city simply laid itself out in my mind like a glowing, high-contrast blueprint.
A ten-meter Titan lunged from a cross-street, its massive jaws snapping at Mylius’s trailing wires.
My threat-assessment radar pinged in a microsecond.
I didn’t yell a warning.
Yelling wasted oxygen.
I bypassed my gas restrictor, violently squeezing my right trigger.
The anchor fired in 0.4 seconds, slamming into the plaster wall of a three-story townhouse.
I used the extreme, concussive burst of gas to slingshot myself directly underneath Mylius’s flight path.
I didn’t go for the nape.
The angle was entirely wrong, and calculating a sweeping strike would cost me exactly 1.2 seconds of forward momentum.
Instead, I drew my right blade, inverted my grip, and used my horrific velocity to drag the razor-sharp steel directly across the Titan’s massive, unblinking left eye as I shot past its face.
The Titan let out a garbled, deafening shriek, its hands flying up to clutch its ruined face, completely abandoning its pursuit of my squad.
I re-sheathed the blade with a sharp clack, fired my left anchor, and seamlessly re-inserted myself into the rear of our diamond formation without losing a single mile per hour of speed.
“Target blinded.
Flank secure.
Maintain your intervals!” I ordered coldly, ignoring the burning ache in my shoulders.
“Kai, you’re a monster!” Thomas yelled back over his shoulder, his voice a mix of absolute terror and profound awe.
“I am a logistical manager, Thomas.
Now keep your eyes forward before you fly into a clock tower,” I snapped.
We were actually surviving.
My strictly enforced, mathematically precise flight path had successfully kept all seven of us completely intact through a warzone that was currently chewing up veteran Garrison squads by the dozens.
“I see it!” Armin shouted, pointing a trembling finger through the thick, grey smoke.
“The supply depot!
It’s just over the next block!”
“Finally,” Eren grunted, his green eyes locking onto the massive, fortress-like stone building in the distance.
But as we crested the pitched roof of a large merchant guildhall and the depot came into full view, my stomach plummeted entirely into my boots.
The central supply depot was a highly fortified, four-story stone structure designed to withstand a siege.
But it was completely, hopelessly surrounded.
At least two dozen Titans, ranging from five to fifteen meters, were swarming the building.
They were clawing at the reinforced iron windows, slamming their massive fists against the heavy oak doors, and peering through the skylights with grotesque, empty smiles.
Worse, the surrounding rooftops were littered with stranded, hyperventilating cadets.
They were sitting on the clay tiles, their blades dropped, staring blankly at the swarm.
They had run out of gas.
They had retreated to the high ground, completely abandoning the depot, and were now just waiting to die.
“Halt!” I roared, firing both anchors into the slate roof of a nearby cathedral.
My squad obeyed, slamming into the tiles around me, panting heavily.
The steam from the Titan swarm below drifted up to us, carrying the horrific, metallic smell of fresh blood.
“They’re swarming the gas reserves…” Mina whispered, her face completely drained of color as she dropped to her knees.
“We can’t get in.
We’re going to run out of gas out here.”
Eren gripped his blades, his knuckles turning white.
“We have to fight our way through!
If we don’t get gas, we can’t climb the wall!
We just have to kill enough of them to clear a path to the doors!”
“Negative.
That is a statistically impossible tactical objective,” I stated flatly, my eyes darting across the chaotic swarm, rapidly calculating enemy mass, proximity, and our dwindling fuel reserves.
“We do not have the kinetic energy to systematically dismantle twenty-four biological anomalies.
If we engage in a frontal assault, our gas will deplete mid-swing.
We will fall into the swarm and be consumed within forty seconds.”
“Then what do we do, Kai?!” Eren demanded, rounding on me with furious, desperate eyes.
“We can’t just sit here like the rest of these cowards!”
“I am formulating a diversionary protocol,” I said coldly, holding up a hand to silence him.
My brain was running at maximum capacity.
I needed a distraction.
I needed a localized, high-decibel acoustic event to draw the swarm away from the reinforced oak doors long enough for us to slip inside.
‘I have my red toolbox.
I have a half-empty canister of highly pressurized, flammable ODM gas.
If I detach the pressure valve, wrap the canister in thick layers of duct tape to increase the explosive yield, and strike it with a spark…’
I was building a crude, terrifyingly unstable fragmentation grenade in my mind.
“Listen to me,” I ordered, dropping to one knee and popping the latches on my heavy canvas rucksack.
“I am going to construct an improvised explosive device.
I will launch it into the eastern alleyway.
The acoustic shockwave will pull their attention.
When the doors are clear, you will sprint—”
CRASH.
The slate roof directly beneath us violently exploded.
My threat-assessment radar hadn’t pinged.
The anomaly hadn’t approached from the streets; it had been inside the cathedral beneath us.
An Aberrant Titan, crawling on its belly like a massive, grotesque centipede, burst straight up through the heavy wooden rafters and slate tiles.
Its massive jaws unhinged, snapping blindly into the cloud of dust and debris.
The sheer kinetic force of the eruption threw our entire squad into the air.
“SCATTER!” I roared, firing my anchor blindly into a nearby smokestack to pull myself out of the collapsing roof.
Mina and Thomas launched themselves to the left.
Nac and Mylius shot to the right.
But Armin’s gear didn’t fire.
A heavy piece of falling slate had slammed directly into his right spool housing, violently jamming the delicate copper coils I had installed the night before.
He squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened.
Armin fell backward, tumbling down the slanted, ruined roof, his eyes wide with absolute, paralyzing horror.
He slid off the edge, dropping into the narrow alleyway below.
He hit a wooden awning, shattered it, and crashed heavily onto the cobblestones.
He lay there, stunned and gasping for air, desperately trying to unjam his gear.
The Aberrant Titan didn’t ignore him.
It hauled its massive, grotesque body over the edge of the ruined cathedral, its dead, unblinking eyes locking onto the small, blonde boy lying in the street.
The Titan opened its mouth, a sickening deluge of hot saliva pouring from its lips, and reached a massive, steaming hand down into the alley.
“ARMIN!” Eren screamed.
“Eren, hold your position!
Do not engage!
The spatial geometry is a fatal funnel!” I commanded, my brain instantly calculating the intercept vectors.
I was on the smokestack, exactly fifty yards away.
My gear was unlocked.
I could reach Armin in exactly 1.4 seconds.
The Titan’s hand would reach him in 1.8 seconds.
I had a 0.4-second window to execute a kinetic sweep and pull Armin to safety.
I squeezed my triggers, the gas detonating in the chambers.
But Eren didn’t hold his position.
Fueled by a blinding, suicidal cocktail of childhood trauma, unbreakable loyalty, and sheer adrenaline, my twin brother completely ignored my direct logistical command.
He fired his anchors, launching himself off a nearby balcony, entirely abandoning all tactical reasoning.
He didn’t aim for the Titan’s nape.
He aimed directly for its mouth.
He moved faster than I had ever seen him move, pushing his restricted gear to its absolute breaking point.
The Titan’s hand closed around Armin, lifting the screaming, terrified boy into the air, bringing him directly toward its gaping, steaming jaws.
I was rocketing through the air, my blades drawn, but I was mathematically locked into my trajectory.
I watched the physics of the tragedy unfold in a terrifying, slow-motion sequence.
Eren slammed into the Titan’s mouth exactly a fraction of a second before Armin was dropped past its teeth.
Eren grabbed Armin by the collar of his jacket, using his own forward momentum to violently hurl his best friend backward, out of the Titan’s mouth and onto the slanted clay roof of a nearby bakery.
Armin tumbled across the tiles, safe.
But Eren’s momentum had stalled entirely.
He was standing on the Titan’s massive, wet tongue, his blades dropped, his eyes locked onto Armin with a fierce, uncompromising determination.
The Titan’s jaws began to close.
‘Bite force: approximately forty thousand pounds per square inch.
Distance to target: fifteen yards.
I am 0.3 seconds too late,’ my brain calculated with absolute, horrifying, uncompromising clarity.
“EREN!” I roared, my voice ripping from my throat, entirely devoid of logic, entirely driven by the sudden, shattering terror of a twin brother.
I fired my anchors directly into the Titan’s jaw muscles, desperately hoping to sever the tendons and arrest the kinetic closure of its teeth.
My blades sliced deep, spraying boiling blood across the brickwork.
But it wasn’t enough.
The mechanical leverage of the Titan’s jaw had already reached the point of no return.
CRUNCH.
The sound was wet, heavy, and sickeningly loud.
The massive teeth slammed shut.
Eren’s left leg and left arm were completely severed.
They flew through the air, spinning in a grotesque arc of arterial blood, before landing heavily on the slate roof next to a hyperventilating Armin.
Eren’s body disappeared entirely down the Titan’s dark, steaming throat.
The Titan swallowed heavily, its throat muscles contracting, its unblinking eyes staring blankly at the sky.
I hit the roof next to Armin, my boots skidding on the blood-slicked tiles.
The world went completely, utterly silent.
The roar of the city, the hiss of the gas, the howling wind—it all vanished into a suffocating, terrifying vacuum.
I stared at the severed, bleeding arm lying on the clay tiles.
My unified mind violently fractured into two distinct, warring entities.
One half of my brain—the half permanently rewired by survival horror and tactical combat—processed the scene with cold, clinical detachment.
‘Primary Vanguard asset lost.
Casualty confirmed.
Emotional shock detected in secondary asset (Armin).
Immediate extraction required to prevent total squad wipe.
Do not linger.
Do not mourn.
Mourning is a kinetic liability.’
The other half of my brain—the twelve-year-old boy who had shared a womb, a home, and a terrifying childhood with his aggressively loud, relentlessly stubborn twin brother—completely, fundamentally shattered into a million jagged pieces.
Eren was gone.
The idiot was gone.
He hadn’t listened to my math.
He hadn’t listened to my logic.
He had just thrown himself into the meat grinder.
“Eren…” Armin whispered, his eyes dilated in pure, absolute shock, staring at the severed arm.
He let out a high-pitched, broken scream, a sound of such profound, soul-tearing agony that it made my own chest physically ache.
“EREN!”
Mina, Thomas, Nac, and Mylius landed on the surrounding roofs.
They saw the blood.
They saw the Titan.
They saw Armin screaming.
Mina dropped to her knees, weeping uncontrollably.
Thomas threw up over the edge of the gutter.
The squad was entirely, catastrophically broken.
The Aberrant Titan, having finished its meal, slowly turned its massive, horrifying head toward us, its mouth dripping with my brother’s blood.
The human part of me wanted to draw my blades, scream my own war cry, and carve the monster into a hundred tiny pieces until my gas ran dry and my swords shattered.
I wanted to tear it apart with my bare hands.
But the tactical programming—the icy, unforgiving logic of survival—violently seized control of my central nervous system.
‘Revenge is a tactical error,’ the cold voice in my mind commanded.
‘The target is heavily armored by its own mass.
Your gas reserves are at fourteen percent.
If you engage, you will die.
If you die, this entire squad dies.
Secure the surviving assets.
Move.’
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t cry.
I reached down, my hands moving with terrifying, robotic precision, and grabbed Armin by the front of his harness.
I hauled him violently to his feet, my grip bruising his collarbone.
“Kai…
he’s gone…
he saved me…” Armin sobbed hysterically, completely limp in my grip.
“Shut up,” I said.
My voice didn’t even sound human.
It was dead, flat, and colder than the absolute vacuum of space.
It was the voice of a machine that had just deleted a corrupted file.
Armin choked on his sobs, his eyes widening in terror at the sheer, unnatural emptiness in my expression.
I turned my head, locking my dead eyes onto Mina, Thomas, Nac, and Mylius.
“Grief is a luxury we mathematically cannot afford until we are behind a reinforced steel wall,” I ordered, my tone slicing through their panic like a scalpel.
“Your Vanguard is dead because he broke formation.
If you break formation, you will join him.
Draw your blades.
Check your anchors.
We are breaching the supply depot right now.”
“But Kai…
your brother…” Mina wept, wiping her eyes.
“I don’t have a brother right now.
I have a mission objective,” I lied smoothly, ruthlessly suppressing the agonizing, burning pain in my chest, locking it away behind an impenetrable wall of tactical calculus.
I looked at the supply depot.
The swarm of twenty-four Titans was still crowding the heavy oak doors.
I reached around to the small of my back, popping the heavy metal latches of my red Master Mechanic’s toolbox.
I pulled out a spare, heavy-iron gas canister, a spool of high-tension steel wire, and three rolls of my heavy-duty Duck Tales duct tape.
“Mina, take point,” I commanded, rapidly wrapping the silver tape around the gas canister, layering it thickly to exponentially increase the internal pressure yield.
“I am going to build a highly unstable concussive explosive.
I will throw it into the swarm.
When it detonates, you will not hesitate.
You will fly through the smoke, kick through the reinforced glass of the second-story windows, and secure the interior.
Do you understand me?”
Mina swallowed hard, her tears stopping out of sheer terror of my unblinking, deadpan authority.
“Yes, Kai.”
“Good,” I muttered, ripping the thick silver tape with my teeth.
My brother was dead.
My squad was traumatized.
We were stranded in a warzone with failing equipment and impossible odds.
But I was the absolute highest-ranking average soldier in the military, and I entirely refused to die today.
“Let’s see how much structural physics these monsters can handle,” I whispered, striking a spark against the iron canister.