I do not own Fairy Tail nor Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan - only the story and original characters.

*Side note for AoT: This may have a few spoilers as not yet seen in the anime, but in the manga.

*Side note for FR: Alternate universe. Changes have been made to the original storyline for this storyline. Only minor research has been done.

Read at your own risk. Don't take any calculations too literally.

Chapter 1

It was a dark evening, the full moon unseen behind the thick blanket of blackness in the atmosphere. The skies were black with fury as the storm clouds trembled and threatened to slice the air and Earth with hot electric knives. Thunder roared angrily.

Trees swayed and bowed to the terror above them, begging for their lives to be spared only to be struck from elsewhere mercilessly and set ablaze. Wildfire spread like a plague through the forest trees, the not-so-safe haven of the soldiers destroyed effortlessly.

The Forest of Giant Trees burned, nothing left of it but the night and grey ashes of the long dead's remains. The dust danced in the ghastly zephyrs as more and more acres succumbed to the flames.

In the distance and above, the fire spread its black breath.

"Eren." Mikasa said gently, forcing herself to quicken her pace to stand alongside him. "Eren... What's on your mind?"

The soldier now at her right side sighed a deep, life-consuming breath. "I had a dream... It seemed like a significant dream, but I can't remember it." He scowled, fists clenched to his sides. This sort of thing always happened to him, ever since he was a young boy.

"It's just a dream," the raven-haired beauty said in a comforting manner, trying to soothe her childhood friend into tranquility.

The man simply shook his head, strutting harder down the paved road as they passed through the residences to get to where his captain, Levi, had ordered the both of them to go.

It was relatively quiet in the village they were walking through as not much had happened since the capture of Annie Leonhart. The blonde was still encased in a crystal-clear cocoon that seemed impossible to open. The Wall Sina had been repaired shabbily after the fiasco, as had most of the the small circle of land. Plans to retake the Wall Maria were postponed since the Recon Corps were temporarily side-tracking from that mission at the moment.

They hadn't taken a trip outside the walls after the incident with Annie, the female titan shifter. With no money for essential gears ad supplies, venturing in the outside world was far too dangerous, as though it wasn't as dangerous as it was even with supplies. Plus, numbers in the scout regiment had dwindled over time, with several members either transferred, dead, or missing. For the most part, their friends from their training days were still alive and working. No one they knew well who hadn't died during the fight against titans had died over the time span of two years, but some did go missing. Bertholt and Reiner had disappeared shortly after the female titan's attack. They were deemed MIA for five months until they were considered dead—the conclusion being them having been either crushed to no recognition or eaten by Annie while she was in her female titan form. At least their three-dimensional maneuver gears were found, albeit being bloody and battered near the areas where she and Eren had caused immense damage to the city.

It had been two years since then.

Two very, very long years.

Annie...

"Are you thinking about Annie?"

Eren nearly halted at the sound of her name swirling through his ears and melting into his mind. But his legs continued walking, despite the upper body's frozen state. Even his arms had stopped swinging and were now kept tightly to his sides.

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I said, I'm not, Mikasa."

"You are."

How did this woman always fucking see through him?

"She still hasn't come out of her cocoon..." she continued.

"I know."

The conversation ended as they reached their destination. There, Captain Levi stood in front of them, the darkness under his eyes more defined than usual. Atop his midnight horse in his uniform and elemental green cape alike his two subordinates, he pulled the other horses towards the two soldiers below him. "Get on them. We're leaving the Walls for a short time."

Eren looked around warily, realizing it was just the three of them. "Why is it only us three?"

"The others died," Levi reminded him strikingly so, pulling his horse around towards the gates. "So it's only us. It would've been only us two, but another wanted to tag along." Mikasa went unfazed. "We don't need a lot of people for this simplistic mission anyways. We need strong people, and if they aren't strong, then they're just dead weight. We only need to go outside the walls."

The phrase "outside the walls" echoed through their ears, past their thoughts, and into their barely buried, pain-filled memories. They hadn't been outside the walls since... Well, it had been two years since. The focus on Wall Sina's recovery was too significant for any funding to go to any of the forces then, and they had only resupplied recently.

"If we run into any titans without being able to use our maneuver gear, then we'll retreat. It's a simple mission considering what's been happening lately with the rest of the force."

With a question in mind, Mikasa wasn't afraid to find out what she wanted to know, even if it was the formidable, one-man army Captain Levi. "It isn't anything that would put Eren's life in danger," she stated rather than asked it as they rode through the town, the guards at the gate ready to receive them and bid them farewell.

Levi would have snorted if it were in his character to do so. Instead, he held a composed expression that had the slightest hint of a scowl on it.

"Is there any situation faced with a titan that a life isn't in danger, Ackerman?"

The venture was silent.

The three were now well past the Wall Maria, but they were too far out to pinpoint their exact location. So far, their fortune was blessed as no titans had been sighted just yet. Though the three were extremely talented so to say, there was no guarantee that they would all make it back alive. In fact, who knew if even one of them would be able to safely return. Predicting the future was hard enough as it was, but with titans in the equation, there was no telling if you even had a future.

Levi had relayed to them that for their mission, they were going to see where the immense black smoke sighted even from Wall Sina was coming from. It could be another human civilization also encased by protective walls, or it could be something else. Either way, finding contact with another walled society or any information concerning titans at this time was incredibly crucial and valuable.

The black smoke was thick in the sky, never ending, never disappearing. It had been there for the last few days or so. Its ashy scent reeked around Wall Rose's most southern part, and had caused something like an epidemic there, their main symptom being a rather deadly cough going around the area there.

"37 degrees North, 12 degrees West, approximately 32 miles from our current spot," the gifted commander muttered to himself under his breath, whipping his horse into quicker action. "It should take us a while before we can see anything clearly. There won't be enough time to actually get to where the smoke is coming from, but at least we can pinpoint what it is at a better distance."

Silence continued to hover over the group.

The three continued to ride on, noticing that still not a single titan was around. It was strange. Once or twice they would come upon footsteps of the titans, but not a single being came into sight. Instead of feeling safe, they felt the complete opposite.

The atmosphere was far too eerie to relax as if this were a stroll in the park. This was outside the walls after all—not a second passed without their lives being on the line.

After a while, they sighted the smoke gradually thickening, becoming blacker and blacker with every mile they covered on horseback. It was almost clear that there was something similar to a fire up ahead. Once they reached the foot of a hill, the horses began tiring as they clomped their way towards the top.

"Fire," Levi concluded as he was the first to reach the peak, spotting the dimming colors of a blazing flame. "It's definitely fire."

Eren squinted his eyes, one hand aligned with his brows. "Should we go see what caused the fire?"

"There was a thunderstorm a few nights ago. That may have been the cause." Shaking his head, he took the green hood off his head. "There's no point in going down and endangering ourselves. The titans that roamed the forest must be running amok from their habitat being destroyed. No human would dare disturb them and make them restless, so we can precisely conclude that this is no civilization."

Eren wasn't buying it. If there was any chance at all that they could gain an advantage against the titans, he wanted to take it. Even if it meant he would die. "What if they were a civilization that knew how to fight the titans and weren't afraid of them? That would explain destroying the forest in order to seek the monsters out."

"You really want to go down that badly?" Levi sneered. "Don't forget that your existence is just as valuable as finding another mere civilization. In fact, you're worth much more, so don't go throwing your damn life around while it's still needed."

"But-"

Any further possible conversation about thunderstorms was dissolved within a matter of sections as the ground began to rumble with great strength.

The horses neighed in fright, and the three quickly galloped downhill to retreat as quickly as possible. There was only one thing that could make the Earth rumble without splitting the ground and creating a fissure, in which case it would be an earthquake. However, even an earthquake would have been better than what the cause of the shaking was now.

A titan was coming.

"Twelve meter class," Levi spoke in an almost irritated manner. "Plus a seven meter one," he added after spotting the more grim-looking one behind the taller titan.

The taller, bowl-cut haired titan had an eerie grin on its unusually large head, yellowed teeth flashing at them above a not-so-proportional smaller body, whereas the other had intense facial hair with a more stoned expression on a normal titan body. Though they were walking quite slowly, their long strides made them nearly caught up to the smaller-in-comparison humans in almost no time. Their steps were also beginning to accelerate, which proved to be problematic because there was really nothing they could do with their three-dimensional maneuver gear in the barren area they were currently in.

"I'll handle them," Mikasa spoke quickly as the seven meter class titan closed into their group. She slowed down purposefully in order to manipulate her gear to swing her into the air by using the titan's body as a mass to hook onto. Unsheathing the fresh blades in her hands, she rapidly crossed her arms and effectively sliced off the nape of the monster's neck. "Seven meter class down," she yelled to the group as the creature collapsed into a pile of steaming muscle.

"Then I'll take on the twelve meter one," Eren shouted, leaping off of his horse and hooking onto the smaller titan with his gear. His body flew in a spherical manner around the beast, and just when he was about to efficiently kill the titan, it turned its entire head around with its mouth wide open. His blades only managed to chip a tooth before he rebounded off its lips before it could strike out and bite him. Luckily, it only managed to tear off the bottom part of the heel of his left boot.

"Abnormal type," the corporal identified the titan and also left his horse to take flight. "How filthy..."

His eyes met Eren's and they both immediately knew the plan: if they striked the titan at the same time, there was a chance that one would be able to get its nape, while the other had to try not getting eaten. If it wasn't those two, then they would only get the side of its neck at most, which was not useful and would only consume more time in defeating it. It all depended on Lady Luck.

Levi swooped down from the sky. "Now!"

Four blades shimmered in the light of the sun, both swirling downwards in hope of finding death. The head spotted Eren first, and proceeded to turn its open mouth towards the soldier, leaving its bare nape victim to Levi's wrath. Eren readied himself to dodge his death as Levi hungered for a clean cut for the kill.

But then the titan made an unpredictable move.

Whether it was Lady Luck's intention or not, the titan began stumbling backwards, perhaps unable to keep its unusually large, twistable head up and tumbled down onto its bare bottom, causing the captain to miss and leave himself vulnerable to the titan.

Now focused on Levi, a large, tanned hand came towards him and the man barely had a microsecond to react. Mikasa was too far away to aid him, as was Eren who had just barely shot himself out of the way with his gear.

A palm stained with the smell of grass and dirt came inches away from his body. He didn't have enough time to redirect his blades—they'd be crushed no matter he tried at this point.

The last half of the microsecond whirred by, and then-

Voices.

"Wow, what a big guy! I think I'll take this one on!"

"As if, smoked brain! You can't handle him."

"You guys... I think we should focus on saving those people."

It passed by.

And a miracle happened.

"Freeze!"

Within a mere second, from the corner of Levi's eyes, a beam of dark blue shot out from below, causing cold ice to rapidly encase around the titan. The monstrous creature had been frozen stiff, his hand outstretched still as Levi continued to fall with wide eyes.

What was happening?

"Fire Dragon's Flaming Fist!"

This time, his eyes followed a pink-haired figure, white scarf trailing behind him as his fist, which seemed to be engulfed in flames, pummeled into the side of the icy titan. Immediately cracking from the hot and deadly move, the titan crumbled into a mountain of glassy shards, of one Levi could see was the essential piece of nape.

"Wool Cushion!"

Before he even knew it, the ground became covered in a soft, pink substance that both Levi and Eren were saved by as they fell from the air in absolute confusion. Even Mikasa was astounded completely frozen before returning to reality and she quickly ran over to Eren's side and helped him out of the material. Levi was long out of it by the time Mikasa had come over. He was busy analyzing what the fuck just happened.

The titan was reduced into sharp pieces of ice, neither steaming, disappearing, nor regenerating.

That was...

It was new.

Three people stood before them, and they definitely didn't seem like any normal humans. Mikasa and Eren quickly appeared by Levi's side with their blades unsheathed, but Levi's hand motioned for them to stay calm. With a glare that could destroy the walls of the soul, the captain waited for the three to explain themselves, hands placed on the handles of his blade—just in case.

"Hey, so..." one began, and immediately the three force members stood in a defensive position, blades casted. The same person panicked, hands flying everywhere in a flurry, not wanting to cause a misunderstanding. "No, we aren't, uhm, enemies! We're mages from Fairy Tail and I'm Lucy!"

"I'm Natsu," the pink head grinned, pointing his thumb to himself.

"Gray Fullbuster," the near-naked one introduced himself as well.

The blonde girl named Lucy smiled. "We've been running into those weird giants a lot-"

"Titans," Eren corrected unconsciously. "They're titans."

"Okay, titans," Lucy mumbled nervously from the sudden interruption. "But, anyways, we've cleared all of the remaining titans in the area including the two we just decimated right now, so there's no need to worry about those guys anymore! We've just kind of gotten lost, so do you think you can show us where we are, exactly...? We're lost."

Levi walked forward, face full of arrogant disbelief. "You are... lost."

"Yes...?"

"Lost."

"Yes, uhm, we're from Fiore...? Ring a bell, yes, no...?"

Levi only sheathed his blades, as did Eren and Mikasa, following his example. Though Levi was still suspicious, both him and Eren knew in their gut that these people were unreal. They weren't ordinary travelers... No one had that kind of technology, but for them it wasn't even that. The attacks had come from their body, making them either dangerous enemies or strong allies. Humanity could not allow the former.

"Come with us... mages. We'll take you to where we live for now, since there's nothing but vast land all around. We'll take you to the Walls."

So has humanity finally found a hint for a way to combat against the titans? How in the world did the Fairy Tail team get so lost from Fiore? Next Time: The Rustic Key!