Running for your life during an active apocalypse is significantly less cinematic than the comic books and movies make it look.
Mostly, it’s just a lot of aggressive, asthmatic wheezing, desperately dodging terrified people who have lost all sense of spatial awareness, and deeply, profoundly regretting every single time I chose to take a nap instead of doing basic cardio.
‘Move.
Left flank.
Clear the alley.
Dodge the falling masonry.
Ignore the screaming,’ my newly acquired Leon S.
Kennedy template was rapidly barking cold, tactical orders directly into my brain, treating the panicked, blood-soaked streets of Shiganshina like a timed obstacle course.
Meanwhile, my normal-guy brain was just screaming internally.
‘My lungs are on fire!
Why didn’t I invent a bicycle?!
I could have invented a bicycle!’
I was physically dragging Eren by the wrist with my left hand and heavily guiding Mikasa by the shoulder with my right.
My Ultra Rare tactical instincts were the only reason we hadn’t been trampled to death by the stampede of civilians rushing blindly toward the inner gate.
Every time a fleeing merchant or a terrified horse veered into our path, my body automatically adjusted, violently shoving us out of the fatal crush.
“Mom!
We have to get to Mom!
Our house is this way!” Eren was screaming, pulling against my grip with a terrifying, adrenaline-fueled strength.
“I know!
I am taking the optimal route, stop resisting my tactical pathing!” I yelled back, hauling him around a shattered wooden cart that had been crushed by a flying boulder.
We rounded the final corner to our street, and my stomach plummeted entirely into my boots.
A massive chunk of the wall, easily the size of a wealthy merchant’s carriage, had crushed the front half of our house.
A thick cloud of dust was still settling over the splintered wood, broken clay roof tiles, and shattered glass.
“MOM!” Eren shrieked.
He violently tore his wrist out of my grip and sprinted toward the wreckage.
Mikasa was right behind him, her face pale and stricken.
I followed closely, my Leon instincts immediately scanning the perimeter for threats.
‘No immediate hostiles detected.
Structural integrity of the house is catastrophically compromised.
Imminent secondary collapse is highly probable.’
We reached the rubble, and my breath hitched.
There she was.
Carla was trapped underneath a massive, load-bearing wooden roof beam.
Her lower body was completely pinned beneath the heavy timber and a pile of collapsed clay tiles.
“Eren!
Kai!
Mikasa!
You need to run!” Carla cried out, coughing heavily on the thick dust.
Her face was pale, streaked with blood and soot.
“The Titans have broken in!
Get out of here!”
“We’re not leaving you!” Eren yelled, dropping to his knees.
He grabbed the massive wooden beam with his bare hands and pulled with all his ten-year-old might, his face turning red with exertion.
Mikasa grabbed the other side, gritting her teeth as she strained against the heavy timber, her boots sliding in the dirt.
I didn’t grab the beam.
I didn’t even try.
Instead, my Peter Parker intellect snapped into high gear, rapidly projecting mathematical formulas and structural physics across my vision like a glowing heads-up display.
‘Beam weight: approximately two thousand pounds,’ my genius mechanic brain calculated instantly, highlighting the density of the wood.
‘Added weight of collapsed roof tiles and secondary debris: eight hundred pounds.
Total kinetic load: two thousand eight hundred pounds.’
‘Eren’s lifting capacity: thirty pounds.
Mikasa’s lifting capacity: slightly more.
Conclusion: They could pull until their arms literally popped out of their sockets, and that beam isn’t moving an inch.’
“Kai!
Help us!” Eren screamed, tears streaming down his dirt-streaked face.
“Stop pulling, you’re just wasting stamina and destabilizing the remaining debris!” I snapped, pacing frantically around the beam, looking up at the surviving brick chimney of the house.
“My legs are crushed, Kai!” Carla sobbed, reaching a trembling hand out to me.
Her voice was growing alarmingly weak, her breathing shallow.
“Please, listen to your mother.
Take your brother and sister and run!”
“Absolutely not,” I replied flatly, my eyes darting across the wreckage.
“Do you know how annoying Eren will be if you die?
He’ll brood for a decade.
I refuse to deal with that level of emotional baggage.”
Before Carla could process my incredibly callous, deflection-based reasoning, the heavy, high-pressure hiss of ODM gear gas sounded right behind us.
“Hannes!” Eren yelled as the blonde Garrison guard landed clumsily on the cobblestones, his swords drawn.
“Help us lift this!”
“Don’t worry, kids!
I’ll get her out!” Hannes declared heroically, marching up to the beam.
Suddenly, heavy, thunderous footsteps vibrated violently through the ground.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
My Leon S.
Kennedy paranoia flared so violently it actually gave me a blinding migraine.
I snapped my head toward the end of the street.
Rounding the corner was a fifteen-meter Titan.
It was incredibly disproportionate, with a terrifyingly wide, unblinking smile plastered across its grotesque, skin-crawling face.
It moved with an eerie, lumbering grace.
It was the Smiling Titan.
The anomaly that was supposed to eat my mom and traumatize my brother for the rest of his life.
“Oh, look,” I muttered, my tactical brain coldly analyzing the threat while my normal brain wanted to pass out.
“A biological anomaly with terrible dental hygiene.
Lethal reach.
Moves like a drunk toddler.
Avoid close-quarters combat at all costs.”
Hannes drew his dual blades, striking a dramatic, heroic pose.
“I’ll kill it!
I’ll save you all and pay back my debt to Grisha!”
He charged forward with his ODM gear, looking every bit the brave soldier.
‘He’s going to fail,’ my tactical brain calculated instantly.
‘Improper launch angle.
Visibly shaking hands.
Elevated heart rate.
He lacks the psychological fortitude for a lethal strike.’
Sure enough, three seconds later, Hannes skidded to a halt in front of the Titan.
He looked up at its terrifying, unblinking smile, lost absolutely all of his nerve, and ran screaming back to us.
“I can’t do it!
We have to run!” Hannes panicked, reaching down to grab Eren and Mikasa by the collars.
“Hannes, get over here and detach your grapple lines right now!” I ordered sharply, my voice suddenly dropping an octave, adopting the icy, commanding tone of a veteran government special agent.
Hannes actually flinched, startled by the sheer, undeniable authority coming out of a ten-year-old’s mouth.
“Kai, we can’t lift it!
She’s trapped!
We have to leave her!”
“I didn’t ask for a peer review, Hannes, I gave you an order!” I yelled, stepping back from the crushed house.
“Give me your cables!”
My Parker brain had finished the math.
If I still had my giant Roman concrete pillars, I could have built a massive Class 1 lever.
But I had gotten so sick of them taking up valuable inventory space that I had dumped them into the river just yesterday.
‘Note to self: hoarding ancient architecture is actually a highly valid survival strategy,’ I thought bitterly.
I had exactly four rolls of Duck Tales tape, a modern camping tent, and whatever I could scavenge from the terrified Garrison guard sweating profusely in front of me.
Hannes, completely overwhelmed by my commanding tone, unspooled the high-tension steel cables from his ODM gear.
“Take the grapple hooks.
Fire one directly into the heavy roof beam pinning her, and fire the other up and over that standing brick chimney behind the house!” I barked, pointing to the sturdy brick structure that had miraculously survived the collapse.
Hannes didn’t argue.
He aimed his hip-mounted launchers.
Thwip.
Thwip.
One heavy iron grapple bit deep into the crushing timber.
The other flew up, arched over the chimney, and dropped back down to the ground.
“Good.
Now, we create a block and tackle,” I muttered, rushing over to the dangling steel cable.
I grabbed a discarded, shattered wooden wagon wheel from the street, looping the steel cable through the spokes to create a crude, improvised mechanical pulley.
I whipped out a roll of heavy-duty Duck Tales tape, wrapping it aggressively around the wheel’s axle and binding it to a heavy iron hitching post in the street so the pulley wouldn’t snap under extreme tension.
The Smiling Titan was only thirty yards away now.
Its massive shadow fell over the street, its grotesque smile stretching impossibly wide as it reached a giant, lumbering hand toward us.
“Kai!
It’s right here!” Eren screamed, thrashing wildly against Mikasa, who was physically holding him back.
“I see it, Eren, I have functioning eyes!
Hannes!
Grab the end of the cable!” I roared, throwing the end of the steel wire to the blonde soldier.
“What do I do?!” Hannes panicked, looking between the cable and the approaching monster.
“Pull!
The pulley will multiply your lifting force by three!
Just pull with everything you have!”
Hannes wrapped the steel cable tightly around his forearms, dug his heavy leather heels into the cobblestones, and threw his entire body weight backward.
The improvised duct-tape pulley groaned in terrifying protest.
The brick chimney acting as the anchor point shuddered, raining dust down on Carla.
But the math didn’t lie.
With a sickening crunch of splintering wood, the two-thousand-pound roof beam slowly, agonizingly groaned upward, lifted by the mechanical advantage of the ODM cable.
“Eren!
Mikasa!
Pull her out!” I yelled, dropping to my knees.
Eren and Mikasa grabbed Carla by the arms, dragging her out from under the lifting beam just as the brick chimney finally gave way, collapsing into a pile of rubble.
The heavy roof beam slammed back down into the dirt, missing Carla by mere inches.
“We got her!” Hannes gasped, dropping the cable and falling to his knees.
But my victory was incredibly short-lived.
I looked down at Carla, and all the breath left my lungs.
Her legs were completely, catastrophically crushed.
The bone was visible through torn fabric, the tissue was mangled, and she was losing a lethal amount of blood onto the cobblestones.
‘She’s never going to walk again,’ my Parker brain deduced instantly, analyzing the severe, irreversible structural damage to her skeleton.
‘She’s going to bleed out in under two minutes,’ my Leon template added coldly, flooding my system with emergency field-medic trauma protocols.
Carla let out a weak, agonizing gasp, her eyes rolling back slightly.
“Kai…
Eren…
you’re safe…”
“Stay with me, mom, do not take a nap right now, that is my gimmick!” I yelled, ripping the roll of Duck Tales tape with my teeth.
I didn’t have sterile bandages.
I didn’t have medical-grade tourniquets.
I didn’t even have clean water.
I just had the ultimate dad-tool.
I rapidly bound the heavy-duty silver tape tightly around her upper thighs, pulling it with all my strength to create improvised, painfully tight tourniquets to stem the arterial bleeding.
I slapped thick strips of tape directly over the worst lacerations, sealing the wounds with raw, unforgiving adhesive pressure.
It was brutal, incredibly messy, and medically horrifying, but the rapid blood loss finally slowed to a trickle.
Carla looked up at me, her warm eyes dimming rapidly as the sheer shock and trauma finally overwhelmed her nervous system.
“I love you boys,” she whispered faintly.
Then, her eyes closed, and her head lolled completely to the side.
“Mom?
MOM!” Eren screamed, dropping to his knees and aggressively shaking her shoulder.
“Wake up!
Kai, what did you do?!
Why won’t she wake up?!”
I pressed two trembling fingers to her neck.
‘Pulse is weak and thready.
Breathing is shallow.
Extreme blood loss has induced a severe comatose state.’
“She’s alive, Eren.
She’s in a coma from the trauma, but she’s alive,” I said grimly, my tactical brain completely taking over my emotions to prevent a breakdown.
“Hannes!
Pick her up!
We are out of time!”
The Smiling Titan let out a garbled, horrific screech, its giant hand sweeping down toward us, fingers as thick as tree trunks crashing into the cobblestones exactly where we had just been standing.
Hannes didn’t hesitate this time.
He scooped Carla’s unconscious body into his arms, carrying her bridal style, and took off sprinting down the alleyway.
I grabbed Eren by the back of his jacket, physically dragging him away from the Smiling Titan as he sobbed hysterically.
Mikasa ran at my side, her face pale and entirely devoid of expression.
“Keep moving!
Do not look back!” I ordered, my eyes darting between the rooftops, mapping out the fastest, most optimal route to the evacuation boats.
We ran for what felt like hours, though it was probably only ten minutes.
My legs were burning, my lungs were screaming, and my lazy persona was deeply, existentially offended by this level of cardio.
But my templates were singing in the back of my mind.
‘[Leon Template Integration increased to 15%.
Tactical extraction and emergency field trauma care successful.]’
‘[Parker Template Integration increased to 35%.
Improvised mechanical lifting systems applied flawlessly.]’
We finally burst through the inner gate, reaching the crowded docks just as the Garrison soldiers were trying to violently manage the panicked refugees.
Hannes forced his way through the crowd, screaming at the guards and flashing his uniform to get us priority boarding on the final ferry.
We collapsed onto the wooden deck of the boat, gasping for air.
Hannes gently laid Carla’s unconscious body on the wooden floorboards.
Eren immediately threw himself over her, sobbing uncontrollably into her chest, desperately begging her to wake up.
Mikasa knelt beside them, her hands trembling as she held onto Carla’s unmoving hand.
I collapsed against the wooden railing of the boat, tipping my hat down over my eyes to block out the chaotic, deafening screams of the refugees left on the docks.
The ferry’s horn blasted, and the boat slowly began to pull away, leaving the burning, blood-soaked ruins of Shiganshina behind.
I peeked out from under my hat just in time to watch the massive Armored Titan suddenly shatter the inner gate in the distance.
The shockwave rattled the boat, causing civilians to scream in fresh terror.
I just sighed, pulling my hat back down.
Carla was alive.
We had defied canon.
We had beaten the Smiling Titan.
But looking at her crushed legs wrapped in cheap silver duct tape, and listening to Eren’s heartbroken sobbing as she lay completely unresponsive in a coma, it didn’t feel like a victory.
‘Two templates.
One traumatized twin.
And a mother who might never wake up,’ I summarized internally, feeling the gentle rocking of the boat and t
he deep, aching exhaustion settling into my bones.
‘I am going to need so much more tape to fix this.’