Hopes and Damnations

There was complete silence in the room at Mikasa's words, nobody able to formulate words or grasp the absurd statement that had just left Mikasa's mouth.

Certainly not Serafall.

She had known that her Pawn's world was harsh despite its lack of magic. She had known that a war devastated it when Mikasa was young. She knew that most of Mikasa's life had been spent living a quiet life while the world rebuilt from that war.

Serafall had even weaselled out over the years that the boy Mikasa had loved had been on the enemy's side and had died during that war. Serafall had likened it to the devastation after the Civil War for years.

But... Eighty percent of humanity?

Even at the lowest point of devilkind, after centuries of the Great War and the Civil War, devils had never been reduced to only twenty percent of their peek population. 

The Evil Piece system was instituted because devils' birth rate was terrible. Even in the cease-fire that followed the Great War, devils simply died more than they bred, leading to a slow extinction if not for Adjuka's invention.

Still, eighty percent?

If devils had lost eighty percent of their population, other pantheons would have swooped in and killed them all. Not even Super Devils like Adjuka and Sirzechs could be everywhere at once. It was the main reason the new Satans had been forced to work with the Great King faction of devils, despite their distaste for them, to make up the numbers to ensure they weren't picked off at their weakest.

In the face of extinction, any alternative had been preferable.

But... Eighty percent?

Serafall Leviathan was a monster, even by devil standards. Her body count was in the tens, maybe breaching the hundreds of thousands. Some older devils had cleared the million mark in the Great War.

But... how much death was eighty percent of... anything?

And at the hand of a nineteen-year-old boy?

"Wha..." Finally, So-tan tried to speak, but her words caught in her throat.

"If she can see the dead," Mikasa continued to speak, looking down at the ground and not meeting anyone's gaze. "She probably saw them. If she saw Eren on me, she saw them all on him. They knew who he was. Knew what was happening. Knew it was coming. They all died cursing Eren. I can't imagine anyone more haunted by the dead than him."

A faint part of Serafall noted that even in her despondent state, Mikasa kept her pocket storage tool nearby in case Vali or the other intruders tried something.

A much more significant part of her felt her heart go out to her friend at the heartbreak that peaked through her voice.

Not everybody could hear that pain, though. To most, she was speaking plainly, without inflection.

"How many people is that," the wielder of Excalibur Ruler said grimly, one hand on his sister's shoulder and the other resting on the pommel of his blade.

If he drew Excalibur Ruller here, he'd be icy chunks before he could try anything.

"Our world was a century behind this one now, technology-wise. We have no way of knowing the exact numbers. Even the eighty percent number comes from Eren, though everything we learned after confirmed it."

"You have an idea, though," Bikou pressed. His face was ashen as he glared at Mikasa.

"... One and a half billion." 

If eighty percent was hard to grasp, having a definitive number was... absurd. Insane.

Billion.

One and a half billion people.

One and a half billion dead people.

Because of one boy.

That wasn't just monstrous any more. That was cataclysmic. 

Apocalyptic.

"That was our conservative estimate based on the number of nations that survived and landmass destroyed."

To measure destruction in countries and lives in billions... Minds, even those of devils and angels, weren't made to grasp such things.

"You..." Kuroka growled, stepping toward Mikasa's sitting body. "You expect me to believe Eren killed billions of people? That's impossible! He wouldn't. He couldn't!"

"Unless he set off the equivalent of several dozen hydrogen bombs at once, the logistics of killing that many people is impossible without completely destroying a planet," Azazel said with a degree of certainty.

"He didn't do it all at once," Mikasa muttered. "He did it over days. Step by step. It was not a moment of anger or an accident. Eren killed them all himself. Deliberately."

"...How...Eren... He's..." Rias tried to find the words but couldn't.

"If it took that long, people would just leave, right?" Le Fay asked, desperate for Mikasa to be wrong.

"You all are thinking about it from your positions. Your experiences." Mikasa looked up, her eyes a haunted mask. "We didn't have magic. We couldn't teleport. We couldn't fly like you all can. We didn't have cars. We barely had a few trains. Did people try and run? Of course they did. They died running. You couldn't escape The Rumbling anywhere on Earth. It was inevitable."

Mikasa's eyes met Kuroka's, and something Serafall didn't understand passed between them.

"One of the Nine Titans was called the Colossal Titan," Mikasa said, and this time, her voice was empty of all emotion. "Sixty meters tall, it was called the God of Destruction in our world. Whenever a Shifter transformed into it, it produced an explosion equal to a small nuclear bomb. Even after transforming, it gave off enough heat to burn trees and flesh, on top of being so massive. The Colossal alone was enough to destroy a small country, even ignoring all the other Shifters. Eren was the Founder, the Titan who could control all Titans. He had millions of Colossal Titans."

Serafall tried to imagine it.

She had actually seen Great Red once, from a very safe distance. The Dragon of Dragons was enormous and stretched a hundred meters from nose to tail. The Satan imagined a human of that size without the tail.

Then she imagined millions of them.

...If they were regular humans, scaled up in size, the Underworld would probably survive. They could probably kill them all in a few days if all the Satans and Ultimate Class devils fought at full power. The time it would take would depend on how close together the giants were.

But not before taking more losses than Serafall could imagine, just from sheer numbers. 

The only salvation was that every devil could fly so they'd be able to remain out of reach, but when the numbers were that high, there were bound to be casualties measuring in the tens of thousands.

Humans... they didn't have that option.

And her Pawn had fought that?

"All they did was walk, but that was enough to destroy everything. Cities were crushed to nothing, not even rubble. Animals, plants, people. It didn't matter. They were crushed and burned by the heat. It was hell. When they crossed the ocean, the sea boiled. The Earth shook with their steps," Mikasa murmured, looking away again. "That was why it was called The Rumbling."

"Satans," Sona breathed out in horrified shock.

"Eren didn't discriminate," Mikasa continued, fists clenched against her scarf. "While the Rumbling started from our home and was ostensibly a tool for Eldian domination, it spread outward without care for what was in its way. He crushed our people just to leave Paradis, our island. Then... Then he crushed everything. Man. Women. Children. Marlian or Eldian, it didn't matter. He killed them all. Nothing remained where he stepped but burnt footprints of bloody mud."

"Why... why would he do that?" Rias asked quietly. 

Serafall felt for the girl. Rias had always been an exceptionally kind devil, even by Gremory standards. To have her friend and crush be someone who could do... that, Serafall didn't know what the redhead was feeling, but it definitely wasn't good.

Still, Serafall's main area of concern was So-tan, who had stepped away from Mikasa, almost pressing herself against the Wall. As if distancing herself from her aunt would protect her from her words.

"Salvation and revenge," Mikasa muttered, tightly clenching her fists around her scarf. "Don't be too hard on Eren."

"Hard on him?" Xenovia said, stepping forward. "You just said he killed a billion people! That is a monster, pure and simple."

"Xenovia," Issei said forcefully, placing an arm on his girlfriend's shoulder to stop her.

"What, Ise?" Xenovia demanded. "Killing that many innocent people cannot be salvation, just destruction. So why shouldn't we be hard on a monster like that?"

"Because Eren didn't benefit from that genocide," Mikasa said guiltily. "We did."

Before anyone could ask what she meant, Gasper's control over his Gear faltered. 

Valerie started screaming again and throwing herself away. To her, no time had passed at all.

Serafall wasn't having it. This was hard enough on Mi-chan already. She didn't need someone screaming in fear at her.

In less than a second, the Satan was beside the dhampir and pressed a hand to the woman's forehead.

Serafall might not be an absolute abomination like Sirzechs or have the magical control of Adjuka, but she was still a centuries-old Satan who had fought and won her race's civil war.

It only took a second to blow past the dhampir's magical resistance to quickly induce a state of hypothermia, knocking the woman unconscious.

"She needed a nap," Serafall said with a wide smile as she skipped back to her place, casually putting the unconscious dhampir back on the couch with one hand as she retook her place beside So-tan and Mi-chan.

Unfortunately, her antics didn't get a smile out of anyone. Internally, Serafall lamented. 

What was the point of a Magical Girl if not getting everyone to smile?

"What do you mean you benefited?" Kuroka said accusingly, paying no attention to the brief intermission.

"Eren's plan," Yuuto frowned as he leaned against the Wall. "He told me it was as much about ensuring his friends lived long, happy lives as it was about revenge. The Rumbling, you... fighting him, it worked, didn't it? He achieved his aim with the Rumbling."

"Yes..." Mikasa whispered. "It worked. All of us were saved by The Rumbling. Eldia prospered. We went from a country surrounded by enemies ready and desiring to exterminate us to the strongest force on the planet after the Rumbling. We couldn't be victims because no one was left strong enough to attack us."

"By killing everyone?" Rias asked in disbelief. And anger. "That... that isn't... that doesn't work!"

"It did work," Mikasa denied, but her voice had no strength. "All it cost was one and a half billion lives and Eren. His death gave us peace the world hadn't seen for two thousand years."

"'They create a wasteland and call it peace.'" So-tan sighed sadly, no doubt quoting something cool, as she rubbed her eyes.

"It is something many refuse to acknowledge about reality," Azazel told the room filled with the younger generation. "Cruelty... More often than not, it works better than kindness."

Serafall... She tried not to think of the Civil War, of all the devils she had killed. Some had been soldiers... many hadn't.

All that death for a future for their people. It didn't change what she had done, though.

"You approve?" Xenovia glared.

"I acknowledge reality. As a scientist, I must."

"That doesn't make it right!"

"You are forgetting who you are talking to," Azazel said with a wry smile. "Right? Wrong? It's just perspective. I was there when the Old Man destroyed Sodom and Gamorha. I was there when the tower of Babel fell. Do you think everyone He killed was guilty?"

Xenovia and Irina both looked like they were ready to argue, and Asia was too horrified and despondent to join when Azazel stopped them with a glare.

"Do not forget that if He had His way, everyone in this room, and every devil or fallen out there, man, woman, or child, would have been exterminated. That was what the Great War was. Explicitly. It was a war of genocide, and the winner would be the only race that survived." The Governor of the Grigori seemed to age as the anger left him. "There were no good guys, not even the angels."

Xenovia had nothing to say about that, and Irina was conspicuously quiet.

"There is no such thing as a good person, only people who are good to you."

Serafall cast a worried glance at Rias' mutter but turned her attention back to her Pawn as she started talking again.

"The world became exactly as Eren willed it," Mikasa muttered. "And he hated it. Eren hated the Rumbling. He spent years looking for another way, any other way. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to kill all those innocent people. He wanted revenge and not to be limited to our island or the districts the other countries forced Eldians to live in, but he didn't want it to cost that much. Eren wanted to be free, but he never wanted to kill people to get that freedom. He never got his wish."

"Then why did he do it," Issei asked, demanded really. "I... I'm trying to understand. I am. But I don't get it. I'm too dumb to get it. Why did he have to kill so many people if he hated it?"

"Ise." A teary Asia held her boyfriend's hand to reassure him.

"Eren... He didn't choose the Rumbling alone. We forced him to."

"...What," So-tan asked, horrified. "What did you do?"

Serafall couldn't let this go on. Either So-tan or Mi-chan would be hurt. So she did something she hated doing.

"Everyone," Serafall Leviathan said with an arctic glare around the room. "Calm down. We don't have all the facts." 

She looked at her Pawn and, for the first time in their nineteen years together, gave her an order. 

"Start at the beginning, Mikasa."

Gah. So un-cute. 

But Mi-chan and So-tan were worth it.

Seeing her seriousness, Mikasa looked into her friend's eyes and gave a slow nod, still wrapped in the scarf.

So she told them.

Mikasa spoke about a world a hundred years after an apocalypse, where humanity's only survivors lived within three great walls, beset at all times by man-eating titans.

There were frowns around the room as people realized her tale clashed with what they already knew about her world.

"It was so black and white then," Mikasa spoke softly, almost longingly, of those times. "Humanity was good, the Titans were bad. Soldiers were our defenders. But... the cracks were already there for those who knew how to look. The myth was held by a thread. We were dying. Slowly but surely, we were dying. Animals in a cage slowly being picked off. It might have taken centuries, but humanity would go extinct."

"But you were a child," Serafall encouraged softly. "You didn't need to worry about that. You just had to live your life and grow."

"We were happy in our ignorance. Those who wanted to be free would join the scouts and likely die," Mikasa continued in a self-deprecating tone. "A self-correcting issue. The rest of us? We just lived our lives, doing what we could to be happy."

"What changed," Sona asked, not unkindly but firmly.

"...We just called it 'That Day.'" Mikasa muttered, wrapping herself in her scarf. "That's all it was. Another day. But it was the day we received a grim reminder of the real nature of the world. Humanity was not safe. We lived in fear of the Titans. We were disgraced to live in these cages we called Walls." 

Mikasa looked up, meeting everyone's eyes for the first time in a while.

Serafall's heart broke just a little more at that look.

"You can't understand without experiencing it. The fear and shame of living like that. Of being prey. We were food, nothing more. Our illusion of safety and happiness disappeared when a Titan, larger than even the Wall, destroyed the gate to Shinganshina. Home..." 

Mikasa trailed off for a moment, then shook her head and continued.

"A second odd Titan, one covered in armour, burst through the broken gate to the city and charged straight through. Our defences could not stop it as it destroyed the inner gate. And just like that, humanity lost a third of all it owned."

"Titan Shifters," Rias noted, biting her thumb hard enough to pierce the skin. "Someone did that."

"We didn't know shifters were a thing then," Mikasa said helplessly. "We didn't know Titans were people. All we knew was that Titans were out there strong enough and smart enough to destroy our defences. One Wall fell in minutes. If the other two fell, humanity was finished. We lived in fear of the armoured and colossal titans for years, never knowing when they'd show up and end it all."

"Eren's revenge," Yuuto said with clenched fists. "If someone did that to me... To my home..."

Mikasa didn't comment on his words, but her shoulders did slump further.

"...We were away from the house when it happened. Saw the Colossal ourselves," she said mechanically. "We knew we had to run. Grisha was out of the city for work, so he was safe, but... Carla was still at the house. We ran back to get her as Titans started coming through the hole, led there by a third shifter, the Female Titan, though nobody saw her."

"Female Titan could control other Titans?" Kuroka asked through grit teeth and clenched fists. "I thought that was the Founder's ability."

Koneko hesitantly placed a hand on her older sister's. With the speed of a startled cat, Kuroka's gaze flashed down. Her eyes widened in shock, and she unclenched them without realizing it.

Koneko slowly slid her hand into Kuroka's, not meeting her sister's eyes.

"The Female Titan can use a lesser version of all the other titan abilities, including the Founder's," Mikasa said simply. Then she looked up, her eyes locking on Issei's. "Yes, we called it the Female Titan because it had breasts. No matter their original genders, all other Titans looked like men, so it was the easiest descriptor."

"H..ey, hey," Issei held up his hands in defence. "I... wasn't going to say anything."

Judging by the look on his face, he definitely would have said something.

"It's fine," Mikasa muttered carelessly. "The commander at the time, Pyxis, reacted similarly when he learned of her. Something about men and breasts bigger than their bodies."

Serafall, with more than a bit of humour, noted how the Red Dragon Emperor's eyes went unfocused, and he started drooling at the thought.

He was torn out of it when Sona brought her aunt back on track.

At some point, the horror of The Rumbling left her face, and she returned to her position in front of Mikasa.

Serafall did not like the look on Sona's face. Focused, but not in the cute way So-tan usually scrunched her brows in focus.

It was too... detached.

"You were telling us about That Day?"

Any bit of joviality left the room as Mikasa bit her lip.

"When Ber... When the Colossal Titan kicked down the gate, one of the pieces... fell on our house. We found Carla trapped in the debris. Nothing we did could free her. We tried. For way longer than we should have, but we tried. Then we saw it. The Smiling Titan."

"Another Shifter?" Sona asked, tapping her fingers rhythmically on her arm.

"No. Just an Abnormal," Mikasa explained woodenly. "Sometimes titans were like that. Slightly smarter, or behaving in odd ways, or moving differently. They were always more dangerous than regular Pure Titans because we couldn't predict how they'd move. We called it the Smiling Titan because it was its most identifiable feature. Sometimes something like that was all we had to go on."

"Aunty..." Sona said sadly. "You're stalling again."

Mikasa bit her lip, and Serafall tried to give her an out.

"This is enough for today," Leviathan said in her un-cute voice. "We can continu-"

"No." Mikasa shook her head minutely as she cut off her King. "No, Serafall. If I am going to do this, I will do it once. Here and now. And this is, perhaps, the most important part of the whole story. Carla... she was the start of it all."

Serafall didn't protest.

She just sat beside her Pawn and wrapped an arm around her.

Mi-chan was always so strong, trying to fight through everything, that Serafall wished she didn't try to shoulder things alone.

But if she needed to do this, the King would not go against her decision.

Serafall just sat beside Mikasa and wrapped an arm around her.

She pretended to not feel the subtle shaking as Mikasa spoke again.

"It... came right for Carla. Eren kept trying to get her out, but we couldn't. We just couldn't. Then Hannes, a family friend, and a soldier was there. Armin had told him what we were doing. I think... I think we hoped he could kill the Titan. That he could save us." 

Mikasa shook her head, subtly rubbing her eyes with the scarf as she did.

"It was stupid. We were kids. We didn't understand that it takes a team of people working together to take down one regular Titan, let alone an Abnormal. And even then, there are casualties. Hannes... he was a regular soldier. A half-drunk wall guard. He wasn't an Ackerman, Shifter, or even a scout who dealt with Titans daily. He was... just Hannes."

Mikasa bit her lip.

"He was a regular man. A good man," Mikasa continued. "He saved our lives by running away that day. We understood later. We forgave him. But he never forgave himself for not saving Carla."

Mikasa stopped talking for a moment, and this time, nobody spoke up.

It was a minute later that she could keep going.

"We watched it eat her as Hannes ran. She was screaming, begging for rescue, and it just... bit her in half. We heard it. The crunch. The silence after. That was the last memory Eren and I have of our mother."

Mikasa took a deep breath, steadying herself as if the hard part was over. She looked back up, almost glaring at the room.

"That was also the moment Eren swore to kill every Titan. That Day, that rage is such a core part of who Eren became that you must remember it." Mikasa glared at the room as if daring them to forget. "Before That Day, he dreamed of freedom, of killing titans to explore the world. After That Day, he was always running for that future. Nothing could stop him. If That Day had never happened, there would have been no Rumbling."

"But..." Akeno said, looking confused rather than horrified like the others. "Eren told me he..."

"I know," Mikasa closed her eyes. "He didn't lie."

Akeno covered her mouth to stifle a choking cry. There was that horror, manifold that of the others.

"Akeno," Rias asked, worried about her Queen.

"Ah-" Akeno made to speak, but the words caught on her throat.

"I'll tell them," Mikasa said before she could try again. "Eventually. There are other things to know first."

Serafall at once felt despair and pride at her friend's unwillingness to let others shoulder her burden.

"Grisha found us quickly enough among the refugees," Mikasa said, letting out a breath. "One night, he took Eren into the woods. He was never seen again. Eren had no memory of what happened. That is very common for new Shifters, though we didn't know it then. The first transformation is always disorienting."

This time, it was the Gremory Group, plus Sona, who looked extra horrified.

The Vali Team, plus Azazel and Serafall, looked confused.

"Grisha was the Attack Titan before Eren," Mikasa said simply, not looking at anyone. "After the Fall of Wall Maria, he had gone to confront the Founder to ask for it to help reclaim the lost territory. They refused, so Grisha took The Founder even though he couldn't use it. He returned to Eren and passed both on to him. He didn't have the time left in his life to do it himself. Grisha turned Eren into a Pure Titan using some of his leftover serum, and let Eren eat him. That's how the Nine Titans are passed on. Eating the previous hosts." 

After that revaluation, it took minutes for the members of the Vali Team to calm down, as they were just as horrified as they should have been. Le Fay, in particular, was distraught, and Serafall absently noted the group dynamics in case she needed to use it. Vali was the leader, but everyone kept careful watch of Le Fay.

Even Serafall and Azazel, two old hands at cruelty and violence, felt vaguely sick at the idea of a power that required the inheritor to eat the previous holder directly.

Killing for power was nothing new to them, but being forced to eat a family member just so that you had a chance to survive?

Serafall imagined forcing So-tan to eat her to become the next Leviathan...

She held Mikasa all the tighter.

"Eren didn't remember that night until years later, thankfully, but he had just lost his mother, and his father had disappeared. He, Armin, and I were alone, except for Armin's grandfather. But..."

"There's more!?" Irina asked in horrified disbelief.

"After That Day," Mikasa said, taking a deep breath to continue her story. Now that the personal element was gone, she returned to her dry recital. "Things changed. Humanity had lost the land protected by Wall Maria, a third of the land available to us. Land that was mostly used for food and supplies. Refugees flooded Wall Rose, fleeing the Titans coming in through the hole. There simply wasn't enough food for everyone. Either we'd run out of food and everyone would die, or... we could get rid of people that needed to eat."

"Dear God," Irina said in horror, and all the devils in the room felt a spike of pain at the mention of Him.

The new angel didn't even register, too horrified by the story.

"They called it an expedition to reclaim Wall Maria," Mikasa said mirthlessly. "The royal government needed to eliminate the unemployed, starving, discontent masses. They sent two hundred and fifty thousand, twenty percent of all humanity we knew of, out to fight the Titans with sticks and pitchforks. Armin's grandfather included."

Serafall imagined she wasn't the only one who saw the parallel between that operation and the Rumbling, of which only twenty percent of humanity survived.

"After that... we were really alone. Hannes tried to keep in contact, but he was a soldier, and there was plenty for soldiers to do. For years, it was just the three of us."

Mikasa spent some time reviewing the next few years of their struggle to survive until they were old enough to join the military. 

Then she spoke of the cadet corps, of the 104th year and their struggles to learn how to fight titans, and the comrades they came to know over three years together.

For a while, the story was light. Almost jovial.

Sasha trying to bribe the commander with a potato. Eren getting into fights. Bertholt's silly way of sleeping. Eren's initial failure with ODM gear. Marco's optimism and Annie's cynicism. The way almost everyone had a crush on Krista Lenz, the angel of the group, and how Ymir acted like a guard dog. Daz's repeated mishaps. The awkward romance between Franz and Hannah.

Serafall recognized that Mikasa spoke of that time so much because that was her clearest 'good' memories.

Then, on their last day before becoming soldiers, she spoke of Trost. 

Mikasa told them of the Colossal Titan's reappearance and how the cadets, comrades and friends, started dying.

Eren included.

Mikasa spoke hollowly of how they thought him dead, eaten by a titan. She told of how the city was considered lost, and they were trapped and unable to escape the supply depot.

Then, like a hero, there was the appearance of an Abnormal Titan. One who fought and killed other Titans rather than humans.

Mikasa's voice quivered as she spoke of discovering Eren was the Abnormal, of pulling him from the nap of its neck.

She told them about fighting back to the Wall and everyone's confusion about what was happening. She also described the fear and distrust everyone felt against Eren, his first partial transformation to save them, and the beginning of the plan to retake Trost.

"...If Carla was that start, then Trost was the first step," Mikasa said hollowly. "Seeing Eren carrying that boulder to plug that hole in the Wall... It was the first time we had reclaimed territory from the Titans. It gave us hope like nothing had ever done before. 'With Eren, we can win!' We all thought that on some level. And that was our first sin."

"Sin?" Irina asked. "Hope is not a sin."

Mikasa shook her head and pressed forward with her story.

From there, Mikasa spoke of the government's initial fear and distrust of Eren and how he would have been executed if not for the Scouts stepping forward. 

She spoke of joining them herself with her friends and of their efforts to understand the mechanics of Shifting with only the barest hints to go on.

Then came the disastrous expedition mission to reach the basement in Shinganshina, where they hoped to find answers Grisha had left behind and the first appearance of the Female Titan.

"...Eren's new team died. All of them. To protect him. They weren't the first or the last to die protecting him, but it was just another step forward."

"Eren was bait," So-tan guessed, her eyes narrowed. "For other Shifters."

"The Female Titan was after Eren. Erwin had planned as much," Mikasa nodded. "Though we hadn't known about her and had thought the Armoured Titan would be the one attacking. Still, we fought tooth and nail to protect him. He was our hope. Without him, we were doomed to a slow death. Eren... he was humanity's future. So we dedicated our hearts, our lives, and our dreams to him. To keep him safe. We managed to keep the Female Titan from getting Eren, but that is all we achieved. It was a massive failure all around."

Then Mikasa spoke of the plan to discover the Female Titan's identity and its terrible truth.

"Eren... he values people. He latches on slowly, but once he does, he will go to the end of the Earth for you. To find out Annie was the Female Titan... Before that moment, it had always been 'Humans vs. Titans.' 'Good vs. Evil.' It wasn't anymore."

"... Betrayal hurts," Koneko nodded slowly, and Kuroka's hand tightened around her sister's. "Eren... He was angry, wasn't he? Really angry."

"Annie hadn't just been a fellow soldier. She had been a cadet with us. We saw her every day. She helped train him. Team exercises, eating together, or even just talking. Eren had never hidden what had happened to us in Shinganshina, but to find out a fellow cadet had been partly responsible for That Day, someone who had heard him speak of the pain inflicted by the attack... It broke something in him."

"She wasn't the only one, was she?" So-tan said, rubbing her eyes beneath her glasses. Serafall didn't miss that she surreptitiously wiped her hands to dry them afterward. Then they were back on, and her face was in that look Serafall didn't like. "It can't be a coincidence that the Colossal Titan attacked Trost while you were there."

"...No. It wasn't a coincidence. All three Titan Shifters who attacked us were part of our cohort."

"That is a big coincidence," Vali said with narrowed eyes.

"The plan was that children would be less suspicious," Mikasa muttered. "The military was their way to get closer to important figures. They were looking for the Founder, but they hadn't responded when the Shifters took down Maria, so the Warriors were at a loss. It just turned out that Eren was the Attack Titan, one of the Nine who had been missing for years. They thought they could take him instead if they couldn't find the Founder."

"Satans," Rias breathed out in shock. "How old were they?"

"The same as us," Mikasa said hollowly. "They were just kids, ten or eleven, when they destroyed our home. Teenagers younger than you when we joined the military. Just kids, told what to do, what to believe, who was right and who was wrong by the adults around them. They had been told we were Island Devils, the source of all evil for all their lives. Monsters just waiting to kill everyone."

Mikasa shook her head, and a note of despair filled her otherwise empty voice.

"We were all betrayed. By each other. By the world. By the lies we had been told and we told ourselves. The world... it was just that cruel."

Mikasa picked up the story again, talking about discovering that the three great walls were actually Colossal Titans—millions of them—and that certain parts of the government, military, and religion knew about it.

Then she spoke of the discovery of Titans within Wall Rose and the fear it had been breached, of the hunt for the hole in the Wall at night. Her perspective shifted as she spoke of the siege of the ruins of Castle Utgard. 

Mikasa hadn't been there herself, but her friends had told the story of the horror of that night. Another of their comrades, Ymir, was also a Titan Shifter, and she transformed into the Jaw Titan to save them.

Then, the return to the safety of Wall Rose and the discovery of who the Colossal and Armour Titans really were. 

More comrades betrayed them, only they were also Scouts and on their team, so the pain and rage were magnified.

Once more, Eren and Ymir had been taken, and they needed to rescue them.

"So much happened during that mission... Hannes died. Commander Erwin lost an arm. A hundred people set out to rescue Eren, and only half returned..." Mikasa trailed off, and then she shook her head sadly. "Eren knew it. Armin told me that the first thing he asked when he returned was, 'I got captured again. How many people died this time?'... We should have noticed then. But we didn't. Because our comrades had died, and their deaths needed to mean something. Because Eren was worth it to us. To humanity."

Mikasa stared into the distance for a long moment, then shook her head again and picked up the story.

Seeing her so unsure of herself was so odd to Serafall. It reminded her of those first few months after her reincarnation, where Mikasa just... went along and the emptiness the Satan had seen in her expression.

"I got ahead of myself. All you need to know about the mission is two things." Mikasa refocused on the room. "One, we got Eren back, but Ymir decided to leave with the Warriors. She did it knowing she would be killed, and her Titan passed to another Marlian candidate. I don't know why. Maybe she sacrificed herself to save the Warriors. They'd also be killed if they didn't have some sort of achievement. Even then, I don't think we could bring ourselves to hate them. Ymir knew what they had gone through, so she could understand them when we couldn't."

Mikasa trailed off for a moment, then continued. 

"Probably, Ymir did it for Historia, despite knowing they couldn't be together. So she wouldn't be implicated. All it meant for us was we lost the opportunity to get answers and another Titan Shifter on our side. The second important part is this was the first time Eren ever used the Founder."

"How?" So-tan asked, and Serafall could almost imagine her taking mental notes, trying to piece everything together. "You said he could only use it when working with someone of a specific bloodline."

"We didn't know it then, but the Smiling Titan was originally someone with royal blood. It was among the Titans that attacked us. When Eren touched it, he could command the other Pure Titans in the area on instinct to rip it to shreds. He did it instinctually, having no idea what was happening, but it saved our lives."

"And by that point, you didn't know about the Founder at all, did you?" Sona clarified.

"No," Mikasa denied. "Unfortunately, the Warriors knew. They had been looking for it. They saw Eren use it. They knew what it meant. Reiner... He told me later that the idea of Eren, of all people, having that power terrified him. Anyone else, in his mind, would be better. Still, they couldn't stop us from getting away after that."

"At least he managed to get revenge," Vali breathed out, crossing his arms as he leaned against the Wall.

Mikasa didn't say anything to the White Dragon Emperor, and Serafall had the terrible idea that things weren't that simple.

Still, she let Mi-chan continue.

From there, Mikasa talked less about titans and more about the structure of their society, the three branches of the military, and how the country's leaders had known the actual state of the world all along but kept it hidden from the populace by killing anyone who asked the wrong questions or invented the wrong thing.

She talked about the hidden king, the secret assassination squads, and Kenny Ackerman. And she spoke of the kidnapping of Historia Reiss and Eren Yeager, even as the Scouts tried to keep them safe.

"...It was the first time we killed people," Mikasa said helplessly. "Until then, we were only fighting Titans. People, not titans, were the bad guys for the first time. We hadn't joined the military to kill people but to defend humanity."

"You were fighting the other Shifters," Arthur pointed out grimly.

"We had no idea what was going on with them," Mikasa shook her head. "Their motivations, plans, origins, even the nature of Titan Shifting. We were scrambling in the dark. For all we knew, they were Titans turning into humans, rather than humans turned Titans. They were clearly our enemy, and we fought them like we fought Titans. They were from outside the Walls, enemies... It was 'them' and 'us.' I don't think we really thought about what to do with them when we caught them besides getting answers."

Serafall knew it was never that simple. She knew many Pillar families were closer in ideology to the Old Satan Faction than with the New Satans, yet they had still sided with them during the Civil War out of self-interest.

And Serafall, Sirzechs, Adjuka, and Falbium, the leaders of one side, had let them join. They were fighting to save their race, after all.

Deals with devils all around.

"The government and royal family were from the inside the Wall. The very center," Mikasa gritted her teeth in frustration. "It was proof our fundamental beliefs, the basis on which we could dedicate our hearts even beyond our death, were wrong. All our lives had been a lie. We died for a lie."

"And Eren had been kidnapped again," Kuroka said grimly.

"He must have hated that," Akeno said, staring off into the distance with a wry smile.

"...Yes. Looking back on that first year, when everything was so confusing, Eren wasn't considered a person. Not really. He was a tool. A weapon. He had no agency, no freedom. The government, the warriors, the scouts... us. Nothing he did seemed to change anything. More and more expectations were placed on him, more people died for him, and the burden on his back grew heavier."

"He was carrying your dreams," Issei agreed, staring into the distance. "He didn't want to let you down."

"He fought as hard as he could," Mikasa said, a hiccup in her voice that she pressed down to continue. "Over and over again, he was a victim of someone, feeling like he could not achieve anything. The frustration just grew and grew. This time, he was taken so the royal family could reclaim the Founder by having Historia eat Eren."

Mikasa spoke of the rescue, of learning that Historia was from the royal family, and of how Eren's father had killed the last holder, as well as all the other children and their mother. She told them how Rod Reiss had set everything up for Historia to reclaim the Founder.

But Historia refused.

From there, Mikasa spoke of the military coup, of Eren gaining the ability to harden himself, and of the institution of Historia as queen.

"After going through that together, their relationship changed," Mikasa murmured. "It was the last time Eren was kidnapped, but it was the worst for him. Eren, who had been shouldering all our hopes, learned that he gained his power from eating his father. That he was never supposed to have it. Eren... gave up. All the expectations. All the failures. He gave up. He had achieved nothing."

Mikasa drew in a deep breath, steeling herself.

"But Historia didn't give up. That, more than anything, changed how Eren thought of her. After Armin and I, Historia was the closest to Eren. She had the opportunity to gain all the power in the world, and she threw it away for him. Eren didn't like Krista Lenz, but Historia... He..."

Mikasa shook her head and changed the subject.

From there, Mikasa spoke of the battle to retake Shinganshina, their home.

Listening to her was intense, even for Serafall. 

Especially for Serfall. 

She knew how much these comrades meant to Mikasa, even now. The woman might value those closest to her the most, but she was inherently someone who cared for others.

Hearing of the fight against former comrades, Erwin's last charge against the Beast Titan, Armin's sacrifice to get the Colossal Titan, and the cost of it all.

Of feeding a former comrade, a teenager, to Armin to save him and give him the Colossal Titan. Of the revelation that the Beast Titan who had killed so many of their friends was actually Eren's brother.

"So few of us survived the battle... But we did it. We reclaimed our home. After years, we had finally retaken what they took from us. And we found the basement."

Anger, genuine anger, filled Mikasa's voice for the first time, and she spat her following words.

"I wish we hadn't."