Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is purely for my own enjoyment!
Author's Note: Oh man... Here we go. That multi-chaptered AruAni fic I've been promising you guys. I know the Pirate AU deal is kind of popular and a bit overused, but I actually read all of the pirate AUs for SnK and I can proudly say this won't be like any of them. (Most of them were Ereri and strictly romance, while this will be AruAni with action and romance, so that's already a difference)

This is kind of like the general prologue. It's much shorter than what I usually write, but ehh, prologues. Hopefully this is a good introduction to the setting, time era, and modification to characters. I promise it'll pick up!

The sun rays reflected off of the sparkling, azure water in front of him, creating shimmering shards that forced the boy to advert his direct gaze from the overwhelming brightness. The warm waves caressed the boy's calves and knees with soothing murmurs of promised adventures and far off lands. Half-healed nicks scattered along the boy's bruised knees from a recent squabble with the local dock boys stung slightly in the warm salt water.

Yet, Armin had never been happier.

A loud shrieking to his left caused the boy to jolt out of his dreamlike reverie. He glanced over to where he had last seen his two best friends, curious to discover what had caused the fuss. It took the blond a moment to register that his brunet friend had actually left the safety of the deck and was sputtering in the salty water. Mikasa looked even less thrilled than the boy. She glared down at the flailing boy with a displeased glare.

"E-Eren?" Armin ventured uncertainly. He glanced around him cautiously, hoping that no one had seen the brunet's accident. Armin delicately pulled his legs from the warm, soothing water just in case Eren's screeching had alerted any bystanders. He didn't want to be caught so close to the ocean. The boy loathed the cool breeze that froze the salt-laced skin on his shins and toes.

With an awkward grace learnt only through forbidden practices in the ocean by the moonlight, Eren slowly paddled his way to the shabby dock the three had been perched on. Mikasa refused to help him up, so Armin offered his paltry strength to the boy with an outstretched hand. Eren grabbed the boy's hand and attempted to hoist himself up on the deck. Mikasa finally relented after Eren nearly ended up pulling the smaller boy into the ocean and gingerly hauled both of the boys back from the edge of the deck. Eren flopped onto the deck and rolled onto his back, starring at the cloudless sky above him with slight pants.

Armin slowly settled down next to his friend, shooting the brunet concerned glances that the latter refused to acknowledge.

"What happened?"

Eren mashed his lips together as if the story was the most embarrassing thing to occur in his short life. "I told Mikasa that I was going to enlist in the King's Navy," he muttered. Armin glanced towards the solemn girl standing instinctively between them and the edge of the dock. Her normally blank face looked faintly conflicted as if she was feeling guilty or concerned that particular day.

Armin flicked his nervous gaze back towards the brunet. "But Eren—didn't your mo—"

"I don't need her permission to enlist," the boy announced loudly. With his hair plastered down by the salt water and his nose dripping slightly from the damp, the boy looked younger than his twelve years. He curled his limp fingers into a firm fist. "She's just scared that I'll end up like my dad."

Armin pulled his salt-crusted legs to his chest and rested the underside of his chin on his gritty knees. They had all lost someone to the sea at some point in their lives.

Doctor Jaeger had been on a trip to visit patients on a nearby island when the storm hit.

Mikasa was the sole survivor of a disastrous wreck, found unconscious and drained on a floating plank in the water.

Armin's own parents had sent him letters and keepsakes from their travels across the sea, writing faithfully until one day the letters simply…stopped.

"Aren't you scared?" Armin asked softly.

"No."

"Even though you can't swim very well?"

The boy grunted dismissively, avoiding the blond's searching gaze. "I can swim fine," he added after a doubtful pause. Mikasa was the best swimmer of the three, though she rarely ventured out further than the surf when they would sneak away to the seaside. Armin had the finest form, though his weak physique often led him breathless and stranded in the ocean. While Mikasa and Armin would watch from the shore, Eren would swim relentlessly until dusk fell, trying to improve his balance and speed with little success.

The boy's teal eyes rounded on the blond accusingly. "You can't swim either," he countered with a frown. "What would you do out in sea?"

Armin had long since accepted his physical weakness and did not take offense at the boy's blunt question. He stretched out his legs and smiled at the gently lapping sea. "I've been looking through grandfather's maps again," he began with a dreamy smile. "Someday, I'm going to go to all of those places he went to years ago." Armin's grandfather had been instructing his grandson in the art of cartography for years, priming the boy to someday take over his meager mapmaking business when the old man's strength ran out.

"So you'll be the navigator," Eren began to muse softly. "You could lead us to buried treasure." Mikasa settled down beside him, forgiving the boy for his past comment earlier. "Mikasa could be the best sailor on the ship." The boy's fantasy had soon become a shared dream for the three children from the moment Eren first presented it. "And I could be the…captain! Ow!" The boy broke off with a sour glance in Mikasa's direction when a quick pinch from the girl shattered the boy's excited daydreaming.

"I want to be the captain," Mikasa stated with a faint frown.

"But you can't! You're a gir—ow!"

"What does that matter?"

Armin suppressed the urge to laugh at the adopted siblings' typical antics. Eren would usually lose, as his ambitious and loud mouth rarely knew when to quit before Mikasa's playful pinches became determined prods. He opened his mouth to comment or place his vote on who should be captain when the loud, jarring bells of the town rang through the air with an urgent trill. Armin promptly shut his mouth, feeling the gong of the bell reverberate through his chest. Another loud boom echoed around their ears, causing the gulls circling overhead to retreat with piercing shrieks.

Was...was that cannon? Are we under attack?

Immediately the brunet rose, a wild determination in his eyes. "Mom!" he shouted before tearing down the faded path leading to where he and Mikasa lived.

"Wait, Eren!" Mikasa was already on her feet and running after the rash boy. Armin swallowed and glanced down towards his trembling hand. His grandfather had said their small island hadn't been attack by any pirates in nearly three decades. What could they possibly want now…?

The boy's thought caused him to start. Grandfather… Eren and Mikasa were already long gone, so it was unlikely he could catch up to them, not that he could he expect to do anything to help them since he was the frailest of his friends. However, he could still aide his ailing grandfather in some way. He could at least warn the old man of the dark sails looming on the horizon.

Without giving it a second thought, Armin spun on his heels and sprinted towards his grandfather's tiny mapmaking shop in the center of town. His heart pounded as he ran faster than he had ever run in his life.

Cannon fire erupted around him as did the screams of terror and pain. A house only a few meters away suddenly exploded in a flurry of glass, cries, and wood. The shockwaves from the blast sent the boy tumbling to the ground and his vision flickered for a moment between flashes of white and pitch black.

He slowly struggled to his feet and stumbled away from the house, refusing to look at the decimated inhabitants. Noises to his left sounded muffled as if half of his head was wrapped in gauze. Something warm trickled across his scraped left cheek. He sluggishly lifted a tentative finger and stared wide-eyed at the crimson liquid staining his fingertips.

My ear… the boy echoed forlornly. Even his thoughts were disconnected and distant, as if the cannon shell had severed the blond's connection with reality.

Panicked shrieks and pleas ripped the boy viciously back into the current moment. A large, bearded man holding a dripping sword rushed past Armin, though he paid the boy little notice. The bells had stopped ringing. Either the invaders had killed those in the tower or the latter had simply accepted the inevitable fate and stopped trying to warn the townspeople.

Armin turned uncertainly on his unsteady feet. The blast had also damaged his already precarious equilibrium. He could still run, though his direction and balance was severely weakened. The blond had run into two separate buildings while stumbling towards his grandfather's tiny store. Injured townspeople and ruthless pirates alike surged past him with a cruel indifference. No one stopped to take pity on the wobbling boy, though Armin supposed in their defense that he wouldn't have either.

Finally the boy rounded the corner to where his grandfather spent the long days. Only hours previously, the blond had stopped by to give the old man his prepared lunch, smiling as he rang the bell on the way out.

He was too late. The boy skidded to a stop and resisted the urge to double over in his terror and exhaustion. He wasn't sure if he was breathless out of fear or weakness or perhaps a mix of both.

Grandfather… Armin's eyes widened at the sight of the small, timber-framed store in flames. Even with his damaged hearing, he could hear the horrible, sizzling sound of the merciless fire hungrily devouring the ancient, brittle maps within the shop. Several of his grandfather's most prized possessions were now piles of ashes.

Armin's entire body trembled with panic. He had yet to see the old man anywhere.

"Grandfather!" The boy's terrified, cracked cry sounded foreign to his ringing ears. He took a hesitant step towards the blazing shop but leaped back with a startled shout as the door collapsed into a fiery pile of smoldering fragments of timber. "Grandfather!" Armin tried again, hating the way his voice crackled in the smothering ash and smoke clouding his lungs and making him gag. The boy collapsed to his knees, feeling bitter salty tears stream out of the corners of his eyes.

A shallow cough to his right caused the boy's attention to perk up. He lifted his bowed head and crawled to a previously unnoticed pile of soot. Armin suppressed a joyful hiccup at the sight of his grandfather's dull but alive gaze.

"Ar-min…" the old man wheezed. The blond boy scooted closer to the last family he possessed in the world.

"I'm here," the boy murmured pathetically. He could still hear the crackle of the maps burning behind him. His hearing was returning, though he wasn't sure he wanted to be able to hear the carnage and destruction around him. He preferred the innocent silence.

"Ar…min…" the gray haired man repeated. His breaths were getting shallower and his eyes were starting to dim. Armin clutched his grandfather's hand but nearly ripped his hand away when he felt a faint, papery prod to his scraped palm. Armin stared down blankly at what his grandfather had transferred to him. He wanted to unfold his hand and look, though he refused to tear his hand from that of his dying grandfather.

"Wha…?" he murmured confusedly. He glanced back to his grandfather and his gut clenched at the sight of the man's suddenly bright gaze boring into his own tear-flecked eyes.

"Take…care…" The man's dull eyes slowly flickered close and the old cartographer slumped to the side in a final death thro.

"Gra…grandfather…?" Armin's voice cracked and he tentatively reached for the old man's jacket. "Wake up," the boy whispered in a hoarse plead, though he knew his grandfather was long gone already. Still, it didn't stop the boy from curling both fists (he had yet to look at what was concealed in his palm) into his grandfather's loose, charred jacket and cry into the man's ash-stained undershirt.

He didn't notice the man standing behind him until an icy, iron grip tightened around the boy's slight neck. He squawked and flailed at the sudden action, but he did not lash out at his assailant. The world around the blond tipped sharply as he suddenly found himself lying limply on the ground several feet from his grandfather's body. He blinked blankly at the death and despair around him, far too numb to worry about his impending death. His tiny fist curled instinctively tighter around the parcel in his palm. It seemed as if he was going to die before he ever appreciated his grandfather's last gift. He didn't care if he died anymore.

"Do you see how cruel the world is?" The words were cold and lifeless. However, the large finger underneath the boy's chin was gentle as it tipped the boy's face upwards so he could look into his assailant's eyes. The man's eyes were steely and dead. On his front right pocket blazed the insignia that designated the man as a captain of some sort. Armin wondered what someone like the captain of the invaders would want with a boy like him.

"Remember this," the man's stained lips curved into an equally stained smile, revealing crooked and decaying teeth. "The whole world is your enemy, boy." The last thing Armin remembered before the merciful darkness took him away was a flash of blonde and a flicker of concerned azure.

"Did you find him? Did you find it?"

Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think! I know it's cliche to say, but more reviews certainly let me know which stories to update first :D