Transfer

It was so quiet that it may have seemed like the terrible eruption had reaped one's ability to hear. A wave of dust, wood particles, and bloodied cloth tatters floated carelessly across the barren battleground.

Strangely, what followed the carnage of just a handful of seconds ago was an almost horrific sense of tranquility, one where it seemed awful to make even the slightest noise, any sign of battle was obscured by a disconcerting blanket of unsettled debris. It almost seemed as if nature herself wished to hide away the dreadful aftermath.

The peace, as it always does, however, would not last for long.

"YEEAHAAAHHHHHHHH!" screamed a shadow from behind the wreckage, gesturing victory.

The sudden voice incited the group to ready themselves for further combat, but the largest of them stepped forward and calmed the rest down with a steady hand.

"That voice—" reacted Dan, his voice breaking.

Almost as if by command, the cloud settled and revealed a damaged silhouette; despite its injuries however, the spirit remained undaunted.

"D... Did you.. all see how they scattered there?!! They all just— " a hack ripped through the frail body, leaving a splattering of blood on the ground and a weak smile on the face. "I... I got all of 'em, I did."

However, not a single person in the clearing returned the wounded warrior's smile, not even the man who saw his terrible plan succeed.

"You..." said Lucius. Kenton looked away, an inscrutable look on his face. Only one person could break the silence that the situation brought.

"Boss! Don't move... your—"

"Oh... now that you mention it... I haven't been feeling much there since..." Sid looked to his right side, which oozed blood like some thick, ruby sap where his arm once was. His expression was unfazed, but the weakness oozed out from his failing voice. "Can't really tell since I been hurting like shit all o'er... but I..." His face was wracked with sweat and the start of some tears, but the rush of dimming emotions was dissipating quickly now.

As he stared at the arm that released the missile— or rather, where it should have been— the shock of the blood loss must have finally caught up to him, as he collapsed to the ground, as still as any of the other corpses that littered this clearing-turned-battlefield. Dan pulled himself up from the damaged wooden barricade and rushed over to help his partner but was stopped.

"Don't move him!" screamed Lucius. Dan twitched reflexively, the adrenaline of the battle fading completely now and giving way to the fear of his partner's looming death, "put pressure on the wound with the cleanest cloth you can find. Don't let there be any more blood loss."

"Shit... shit..." muttered Kent as he kept his gaze away from the scene. He fumbled out a wrinkled tobacco wrap, pulling up the decrepit-seeming paper to hold the graying green leaves from his little shoulder pouch. As he did so, a gust of wind blew the bundle from his fingers as he attempted to pack them into the fragile cylinder. Behind him, Dan was fumbling frantically through his belongings. Kent monotonously kept his eyes on his work like it was any other task, finally securing his setup before lighting up the smoke and defending the tiny light from the wind.

Wordlessly, Dan obeyed Lucius' command like a child, taking a faded white-grey cloth from his satchel, folding it over once, then twice, and pressing it to the wound. Almost instantly, the ghostly white color was consumed by a torrent of red blood, pushing through the flimsy barrier and coating Dan's scarred hand.

"I'm putting pressure... I am... he's gonna make it, right? Right...?" His question was heard but followed by only silence even though they all knew the answer. Lucius looked away.

"...just focus on keeping a firm hold on the wound."

Kent looked up as he watched the unnatural fumes seep out of his nose and mouth and vanish into the cloudless sky. "...what the fuck..." he said in a half-chuckle, throwing Lucius a look while Dan kept desperately forcing pressure on the rapidly-cooling body.

In the stalemate with the promise of a lone martyr's death, Boro stepped behind Dan and put a hand on his back.

At nearly the same time as he did this, Sid had another bout of bloody coughing, the syrupy red splattering on Dan's face and the pale dirt next to them.

"Good!" yelled Dan, too focused to notice the child by his back, "stay with us, boss!"

After the coughing, however, Sid's eyelid's twitched back close as he fell back into unconsciousness.

"Boss! Sid!" cried Dan.

"I made it so that he had a stronger body... more powerful lungs... better muscles... y'know..." Boro frowned. "...but it's still too much damage. I can't stop death..."

The large man was speechless at the kid's confession, but the boy's small frame was quickly taken aback.

His body was being held out by the tearing cloth of his undershirt, gripped steadily by Kent as he poured fury and smoke alike from his mouth.

"You could do that the whole time?!" he bellowed, shaking the young boy as if he had the intent to kill, "and you didn't do it at the beginning???"

He reached for his knife. Lucius' face had gone white; he dashed over the short distance to reach Kent, but it didn't matter.

"Let. Go. Of. Me." whispered Boro, in a tone so quiet that only Kent, who was inches away from the voice, could hear. He didn't see it.

He didn't see the days and weeks Boro took to craft together an improved frame for Sid, pouring together the liquid sand and padding each piece into place for the man's survival. He didn't see it, but he could feel it: the power expressed by inexplicable time, welded by such a weak-seeming being.

As if moving away from a diseased corpse, Kent dropped Boro and clicked his tongue before moving away. Boro kept his glare at the thin man as he padded the dust off his body, but Lucius then took this time to step between them.

There was none of his usual mirth or sarcasm in his voice anymore. "Kenton. I know we all just fought a difficult battle together, and emotions are high, but..." he lowered his voice to be a faintly more than a trace, "if you ever try to do something as idiotic as what you just did... I will take away your life myself."

The threatened man said nothing but held eye contact while biting his lip.

"There's only one way to save him," said Boro, moving closer to Sid.

Dan pushed the child away, almost sending him flying, "get away, you little shit! You're not turning him into a monster!"

Boro wiped his face like he was clearing away the impact from Dan. "Then... you want... him... to die?" he asked.

"I... no, I..." the large man gasped for the right words, "... this! This only happened because we had to go after you... since you... you killed our partner."

Hearing his suspicions confirmed, Kent's expression toward Boro hardened even more. He glanced at Lucius, who seemed as if he expected this news.

Boro's eyes widened softly, but only for a moment. "...he was going to kill me..." he muttered, almost apologetically.

"...what does that matter? Who the fuck are you to me...?" he croaked. "We needed him... so we had to go after you... and that's why..." he held the reasons in his mouth between tears.

Hearing this, Boro backed up, and turn around.

"I'm sorry," whispered Boro. He turned back to face the crumpled Dan, "...you're going to let me do it."

"Wha—" an ounce of the grief he had transformed into confused anger, but before he could utilize it, Lucius pounced on him like a hunter going in for the kill.

"Don't try anything." said the old man, immobilizing the man almost two times his size with an intricate chokehold, dragging him away slowly once he had become quiet.

"And you..." said Boro to Kent. "if you try anything... you'll die."

Kent flinched. Despite now knowing the kid was a killer, he didn't expect to be threatened so.

He reached for his weapon. "What did you— "

"But you won't try anything."

The man inhaled sharply. He was frustrated, yes. Angry, yes. But the kid was right. He didn't try to draw his weapon with any intent of doing the child harm. The reason, both of them knew, was this newly instilled sense of "fear."

"Jon will be the 'holder.'"

"...what do you mean...?" asked Kent. Lucius held onto Dan tightly but processed Boro's every word with studious precision.

"The way the power of the titans travels is a bit like a disease..." explained Boro, almost as if he were in a trance, "usually it travels via ingestion of... by a titan... and it..."

The child's words became slurred as if even he didn't fully understand the lines coming out of his mouth, but Lucius, eyes, wide, held his attention forward.

"In simple terms, it would be too much to directly move from me to someone else. For someone to gain the power to become a titan-shifter... they must consume someone that holds the power before them. There is no other way."

Like a loyal dog, the titan, who was now fully healed from the damage it received in the battle, sat down with a tremendous thud behind Boro, awaiting his master's orders.

"If I directly transfer the shifting power like this... the holder will become nothing but an unresponsive vessel." Boro said, a trickle of ghost-like vapor seeping out of his mouth.

"Wait..." cried Kent. "Are you saying you're going to do that to him? You're going to kill him a second time?! That's..."

Boro looked back at him, seeming confused. "That's not how it is... no matter how you cut it, he's already a monster."

"Besides..." said Boro, with only the smallest, child-like smile, "if I could do that to him twice... I would anyway."

"You— "

As soon as he said these words, the cloud of smoke traveling from Boro had already reached its targets. With a blinding flash, Sid's body had disappeared. In its place, a colossal giant with small appendages erupted and fell in the same spot, its weak limbs unable to hold its disproportional weight.

Jon's titan, on the other hand, looked as if it had all the life drained out of it. Its body was a withered husk, but from the cracked skin of the nape, a bulky mass, still partially fused into the dissipating body, whispered out from a crack under a half-formed eye.

"Ma... ma... ba.... ba... ra..."

As soon as the newly-formed carrier whispered these words, the crawling mass of Sid rushed over and consumed the body under the nape with instinctual carnage.

Lucius' face was juxtaposed with Kent's immense horror as the horrible mass bubbled with steam and began to shrink. Slowly, a small body emerged from the melting meat.

"You will have the titan power said to hold the greatest overall combat capability of all the titan shifters," said Boro, eyes fixed on the scene. "...the War Hammer Titan."