hiccup chapter 15 . Jun 21 - Thank you!
ditchmydismay chapter 2 . Jun 20 - Thanks. I guess that's why I like those ships together. They're so different. One is almost the foregone conclusion of friends who have been by each others' side forever and couldn't think of being with anyone else, and is all about the anticipation of realization. The other is about the attraction of two completely opposite people, enemies actually, and how they are tragically separated. They have everything working against them, but they don't care.
tentsubasa chapter 15 . Jun 19 - [7] The black and white of the manga helps tone down the gore. Just pretend everyone is spilling their tea. [12] Yes, there was quite a bit of Aruani in the second OVA. They were only on-screen together, both in the background talking and as part of the main plot, and that was for about 80% of the episode. [13] There's something about the way that Armin and Annie are opposites and also so similar... Plus I think that Armin is the only person who could really put up with Annie long-term; I think she has a few things going on that require someone with Armin's patience. As for the forgiveness, yes, this chapter solidifies the feelings of the people in general when it comes to the awakened female titan. I'm not sure what you mean by your next question. There is the Manga, the Anime, and two other licensed spin-offs, and the visual novels. But I try to take an idea and keep as true to the source material as I can, within the confines of that idea. Is that what you were asking? [15] Eren is still underground and the coup against the throne is in its final stages. Yes, Hanji is Mikasa's sister-in-law because you guessed it, it was revealed that Levi's last name is Ackerman, so in my story it's Levi and Hanji Ackerman and Eren and Mikasa Jaeger. As far as I can tell, he's either Mikasa's brother or real father, and I lean towards brother. Also in the manga is an older guy named Kenny Ackerman who is probably Levi's father. Yes, for Mikasa? It almost killed the poor girl. Thank you, I thought the spoon thing was cute too. The pen thing becomes relevant too... Also he keeps asking the same question because she never answered it. He won't move on to another question until she answers that one.
AnshL chapter 15 . Jun 18 - Thank you. I tried to work the trapped into the crystal part with her meeting Armin in her titan-form, which is one of the best scenes I've ever seen in any anime. Yes, more HS AU will be forthcoming, as this arc has now come to a close. And thank you again, yes, Armin got exactly nowhere with Annie. But, well, you'll see...
MidMorningSong chapter 10 . Jun 18 - Thank you. I really wanted this to be humorous and in-character. I knew something like this was possible and did my level best to pull it off. It makes me feel good to hear you enjoyed it.
MidMorningSong chapter 15 . Jun 18 - These two kids... Such a tragic love story. As for Eren and Mikasa, I might do a short one-shot after one or two other chapters. I think I'm at my angst limit for the time being. Although I could temper it with some headless-Eren humor. Lol, Annie Leonhardt has her duty as a Soldier. As much as she'd love to give in to Armin, she can't.
MidMorningSong chapter 13 . Jun 18 - Thank you. You got your second part, now prepare to receive your third.
theluckyshot chapter 15 . Jun 17 - I could do something like that, with separate people, some driving the 'titans' and others as dismounted cav-scouts with jump-packs and anti-tank weapons. There would be no biological titans though, just mechanical ones. Probably alien ones for the badguys. Although I'm not sure how to gauge the receptiveness of my audience to this idea. I suppose I could try one quick chapter at some point.
Bara-san chapter 15 . Jun 17 - And here is your next chapter.
Auric-Polaris chapter 15 . Jun 17 - Thank you. Here it is.
Guest chapter 15 . Jun 17 - Yes, I have thought about this and I will do it, but I'm not sure you will like it. Have you ever heard of 'Orange Is The New Black'?
maesde chapter 15 . Jun 17 - You are about to see.
Lord Razer chapter 15 . Jun 17 - I will do this also. See two comments above.
...
PROMPT: Aruani Long Fic / Interrogation Continuation
TITLE: The Draw
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Oh boy. This has every warning there is. I'm actually changing the rating of this fic to M just to be safe. No real smut or violence, but discussions of it.
...
The voice was more of a sneer than anything else.
"Captain Arlert, a moment of your time."
The young man closed his eyes to the familiar voice coming from behind. He and his escort, the same young male and female military police soldiers who always accompanied him to this hell-hole, stopped just as they had reached Annie's cell door. The key in the young woman's hand had just about reached the lock before she withdrew it back to the confines of her jacket pocket.
The two Soldiers turned to face the feminine figure making her way down the dungeon stairs, her hard-soled boots clacking on damp stone. Armin paused and counted to ten before he turned to acknowledge the woman. When he did, he had to take a step back. The woman had made her way to an uncomfortable, surprisingly close position behind him.
He caught a strong whiff of expensive perfume and suppressed a quick bout of nausea. She wore way too much of that stuff, enough to make him want to sneeze. Not only that, but he had begun to associate it with some rather unpleasant memories.
"Captain Hitch... So glad to see you," he said, deepening his voice half an octave. His eyes bored into hers, a tactic that usually could have scared the non-existent testicles off of a titan, but accomplished nothing with this woman. He had already played her game a few times and lost just as many.
"I'll bet you are," she said with a bright smile and a firm slap to his even firmer stomach. "Gonna go talk to your lady-friend some more?"
The two military police soldiers began edging away from him, opening a gap. Not good.
"You mean interrogate her?" he said, "Yes, I was about to do that."
"Nah, I think your time is up," she said in her most sickly-sweet voice, reaching out to gently tap his nose for emphasis.
He caught her hand as it hoovered in front of his face.
"I think we can discuss this privately, don't you?," he said, fighting valiantly not to be seen clenching his teeth at the vomit rising in his throat. "Perhaps my offer wasn't generous enough the last time we discussed our respective force appropriations...?"
She sharply yanked her hand from his grasp and frowned. That same hand thrust out to roughly cup his groin. Despite the intense pain within her grasp, he would let himself be buried in a cold and shallow grave before he gave in to that thing and let his discomfort show. He met her smirk with one of her own.
"Sorry, babe," she said, "Your offer last time was forceful, well appropriated, and yeah, very generous-"
The two Soldiers took steps even further away.
"-But that's not gonna cut it this time. Although I think we could still negotiate if you want..."
He knew what 'if you want' meant. The young captain rolled his eyes and pulled her hand off his crotch, placing it on his stomach instead, just above his belt-line. A crooked smile crossed the woman's lips as she weaseled her fingers beneath his shirt, followed by her entire palm. She wouldn't even look him in the eyes as he spoke to her.
"I'm afraid I don't understand, Hitch," he said, "Certain agreements were made in good faith-"
"Very good faith." she cheerfully interrupted.
"-And I've lived up to my end of the bargain. So why the change? I could say a lot of terrible things about you, but unreliable isn't one of them."
"Mmm... It's... It's not up to me, babe," she said. Hitch tore her gaze from his abdomen for a moment, long enough for Armin to look her in the eyes. Sure enough, the woman was sincere, without a doubt. Slowly, she pulled her hands away from him and did a generally terrible job of tucking his shirt back into his belt-line. "They said you knew we were watching you in there."
He brought his hands together about the middle of his chest. Interview stance. Hitch should have recognized it, if she had ever bothered to learn it.
"Bullshit," he said, "I made sure that the room was soundproof." He looked to his left and right at the pair of Soldiers who had been with him just outside the door for the past couple of days. "Right?"
The pair shrugged. Neither said a thing.
Hitch placed her hands on his shoulders, giving them a gentle squeeze before massaging her thumbs into his collar bone. "Armin, baby, we know you know," she said softly.
"I don't know-"
"Yeah. Ya do. And if ya didn't know before, ya know now. We've been watching. It was your own report on the encounter with the female titan that clued us in onto the whole hand-thing. Whadya carve into her palm? A love note?"
"Fuck you."
"Yeah, like three times with your face. Does she know that?"
Armin took an aggressive step towards the small woman, jabbing a finger between her breasts. "I will kill you if you tell her."
"Hey, eatin' ain't cheatin'," she said with a shrug. When his glare made it clear that her opinion on the matter wasn't going to be of any help whatsoever, she hastened to defuse him. "Relax, psycho, I'm not telling anyone about us."
"There is no us. I was doing what I had to do to protect my people."
"Well, Annie isn't one of yours," said Hitch, "She's one of mine. Again, I'm sorry, but this is above us anyway. There's not going to be a 'Captain's Meeting' in my office to resolve our differences this time. The... The King's Guard knows. They're even gone so far as to declare that Annie has been in league with the Usurper Queens from the beginning. One of them is a shifter, after all."
"So?" Armin knew what this meant, didn't have to ask at all, but desperately needed to stall for time.
"So this is it, Armin," she said, shaking her head. As sleazy and morally corrupt as Hitch was, it was easy to forget that she did have a decent side, and Annie had once been her friend. "It's time to forget about your Ice-Princess. I, uh, look, I'm sorry... But she has to die."
Armin's eyes narrowed. Without a doubt, Hitch and the escort Soldiers had to know that he could kill the lot of them without much concern. If he did that, he could then pull the cell keys off the corpses, free Annie, and make a break for it. They would get as far as the top of the spiral stairs before being gunned down by the several hundred military police soldiers garrisoned at the facility.
Armin nodded slowly. "Can Hanji keep the head? She likes to do research on the shifters."
"So I heard." Hitch's lips shifted from sincere smile to knowing smirk. "I'd be willing to release the head to the proper parties for scientific research, if I could be persuaded that it was in the best interest for humankind."
"Soldiers," Armin said, using his command voice, "Give me the keys and leave us."
The pair looked to Hitch who gave them a knowing nod. In seconds Armin had the keys and the pair were up the stairs and out of sight.
When he heard the door shutting behind the soldiers, Armin let out a barely audible sign and dropped to his knees at the feet of the young woman. Biting her lower lip and smiling, hitch began undoing her belt buckle. It seemed that she wanted to draw the experience out and Armin was having none of it. Impatiently, and none too gently, he took over for her her, though it appeared to only make her more excited.
"You know, I think that your... request is a lot more... more important than some, uh, research. So once I say you're done on your knees... you'll need to get on your back."
Unbuckling one of her boots, he turned a narrowed eye up to the woman. "Hell no. I've never done that with anyone but her."
"You haven't fucked in five years?!" She sounded both shocked and impressed as she kicked off a boot. "Yeah, I'm doing you a favor. You need this more than I do."
He jerked hard on her pants and underwear, then again as the clothes caught on her behind, and again to pull them below her knees, finally yanking them down to her ankles. "Hitch... No."
The woman shrugged. She pulled a foot from the crumpled garments, taking a wide side-step to spread her legs. "Meh. I can't force you... But if you don't, I'm gonna feed the traitor-bitch's head to our patrol dogs.
"Choose. You either enjoy this-" She pointed to the tuft of dark blonde hair at the apex of her thighs, "Or you don't get that," She stuck a thumb at the cell door behind her.
Armin clenched his teeth in rage, both at himself for selling his dignity and at Hitch for being, well, Hitch. Despite that, he still couldn't help feeling a little grateful. She didn't have to do any of this. Having espied him writing a message in Annie's hand, she could have just as easily killed them both, or made him exchange his own life for sex, killed Annie, and burned her remains. That she was willing to pretend like he had any kind of position to bargain from was just enough to convince him not to murder her later.
He gave the woman a curt, begrudging nod of acceptance.
"Good choice." She began running one hand through his long blonde hair, paying most of her attention to the back of his head. With the other, she cupped his jaw, stroking his chin with an index finger until he was looking up at her. Slowly, she brought herself into position over him, hands, arms, and thighs firmly locking his head in place. She began murmuring in shuddering gasps and breathy moans, her hips jerking back and forth in time to lips, fingers, and tongue.
"Yeah, Mama likes..." she mewled, "You... you can't tell me... you don't want this too..."
...
The cell door opened with the sound of the cycling lock and the soft whining of metal sliding on metal. Behind it stood exactly who she both hoped and knew it would be.
"No breakfast this time, Arlert?" she asked, half a measure of humor in her voice. No one would have noticed, except maybe the person walking over to her now.
She sat up on the table, adjusting the soft pad beneath her, feeling much better this morning.
Some time during their session yesterday, Armin had given her a pillow, given her a sleeping pad, and released the shackles around her wrists, leaving in place only the ones that bound her feet. It gave her a small degree of comfort and mobility, permitting her to sit up on the table, or let her feet dangle from the edge, or allowing her to stand near the very end of it. Most importantly, with her hands free, she could now scratch at anything that itched.
She rubbed at the pale wrinkled flesh where her wrist-shackles used to be. He had needed them taken off to 'access her back,' as he had explained to the guards who kept custody of the keys. Apparently, he had done too much damage to her thighs and stomach yesterday, and fingernails, toenails, and teeth the day before. As a result, he needed a new spot to carve up.
That was bullshit, of course. Armin knew it, but the guards didn't and bought the excuse. The truth was that there was no limit to the amount of times any given tissue could regenerate, as long as the person was kept well-fed and well rested, and Armin certainly saw to that.
Since his little impromptu note yesterday, she had indeed been feeling a lot better about her situation. It wasn't that she realized all his painful torture had been for a purpose. It wasn't that it would hopefully all be over soon. It wasn't even that Armin hadn't really changed over the years, although that was part of it. No, more than anything, it was that she had been right about Armin Arlert, just as she always had been. The man wasn't a sadistic monster; he was just pretending, just stalling for time. And she would do her part to play along.
It wasn't all that bad. The way he took care of her while cutting her to ribbons, they way he cleaned her wounds, carefully dabbing and gently rubbing at sensitive flesh with antiseptic soaked cotton, the care and love he put into bandaging her... She found it deeply romantic and even a little erotic, in a perverse and masochistic kind of way. If he put half the tenderness he used in torturing her as he did in caring for her, taking ill around Armin would have been better than any vacation she could dream of.
She only hoped that he would be able to figure something out before the higher-ups got tired of her evasiveness and just decided to end her.
"No, Annie, I'm sorry."
She cocked an eyebrow at the young man. Was that genuine remorse, in his voice? In the look on his face? In the way he refused to meet her gaze?
"Armin?"
He gave no reply.
"Armin Arlet, you tell me what's going on, now."
"I'm sorry... I... It's over."
He held out a hand to her. She let him stroke her cheek, caressing it ever so gently. For a moment, she closed her eyes and pretended they were in the forest together, or even better, by the beach, enjoying a picnic, eabout to make love on a warm spring afternoon. Her eyes flew open and she slapped him away.
"Just do it, Armin," she said, "I know what you mean. They saw the hand thing didn't they?"
He nodded once.
"Fuck! Shit fucking hell dammit." she hissed, "We were... I was... Is there anything we can do? What if I started cooperating? If I answered your stupid questions?"
"The order is signed," he said, shaking his head, "Keep the answers to yourself."
Though he held his head low, staring at the ground, she could tell he was silently crying. A few errant tears traveled down his nose to make soft patting noises on the stone floor. Here she was, about to be killed, and she was the one feeling sorry for him. The one who tortured her, of all people.
Half a smile crossed her face. "I don't suppose I could hold a knife to your throat, demand to be let out, steal a horse, and we live happily ever after on a beach somewhere?" she asked.
"I'd love that more than anything, but they'd just kill us both," he said with a grim smile, "They probably want something like that to happen."
A bitterness crept into his voice, more spitting the words than speaking them.
"You don't know..." He continued, shaking his head slowly, "Don't want to know the things I've had to do to get this much... As much of a chance at this as we've had."
"And I blew it," she said, awash in anger at her own stupidity, her words tainted by desperation, "If I had gone with my gut... I should have known. I should have known that you could never have changed that much. That you always had a plan."
Seeing the tears trickling softly over her cheeks, Armin moved to her side and suddenly pulled her up and in for a hug. It was a little too tight, but she didn't mind. His tears mixed with hers, spreading the damp warmth across their faces. This was the last time he would ever get to hug her, and this was the last time she'd hug anyone at all. He pressed his lips into hers and she greedily accepted them, a last meal, wet, salty, and clumsy, but tasting finer than anything she had ever had cross her tongue before.
She had to choke out her syllables over sobs and shivering intakes of breath. "I... I should have trusted you earlier, but instead I... I wanted to kill... to kill us both. This is... all my fault."
"No, Annie, never," he whispered, his lips softly caressing the shell of her ear, "You're a Soldier, same as me. You didn't do this, you didn't want this for yourself. You don't deserve this either."
"Armin... Armin. Who's gonna do it?"
"I am."
"Good."
He began rubbing her temples, thumbs running from the base of her jaw, past her ears, along the side of her head. She pressed her forehead to his as crystalline eyes bored into ocean-blue ones, so beautiful they hurt her to look at.
"No, Annie," he whispered, "I don't want to do this. I don't know if I can do this."
"You have to," she said, "remember what I said? Someone else might get it wrong."
"The... You want me to cut through your skull, your brain."
She nodded to him.
He shook his head. "No. That's not procedure. That's not how we conduct our executions."
Annie pushed the man away, dumbfounded. He hit the wall hard, the back of his head meeting stone with a loud crack.
She squinted her eyes and tilted her head in disbelief. She was sure she hadn't been so wrong about how much he'd changed. "What the actual fuck, Armin?"
"Annie, it has to be-"
"Is that my punishment? I'm supposed to suffer for hours, half alive, half dead, in some kind of waking night-terror?"
"Annie...!" His voice was a desperate whisper, hissed through his teeth. "It's not like that."
"Then what is it like, Armin-"
Her head hit the table before she knew what happened. She could taste blood and feel a mouthful of her own teeth, incisors and canines, before she registered what the hell was going on. Armin, her Armin, had punched her in the mouth. A quick glance to his hand and she believed it. His own blood dripped from torn knuckles, a fragment of her tooth lodged in his bone. Unlike her, he would definitely have permanent scarring.
Rage welled within her, along with the idea of using her injury to shift, only to be tamped down a moment later. There had to be a reason. He didn't want her last moments to be filled with pain and suffering any more than she did, yet here she was, spitting blood and teeth all over the floor in front of her. She ran an index finger over the inside of her mouth and winced in agony. She felt only the shattered remnants of teeth, bloody meat, and a few raw nerves that burned like fire when touched. She had nothing left at the front of her mount, neither at the top nor the bottom.
She looked up at him with confused, tearful eyes. He stood there, chest thumping in and out like a jackhammer, taking short, quick breaths. His eyes though, they were worried. No... Armin's not worried, he's scared. Terrified, even. Terrified that I won't understand something. That I'll do something wrong like last time. That I won't trust him.
He could have tried knocking her out and then cutting her head off at the neck, but he didn't. Rendering someone unconscious with a punch was a heck of a lot harder to do than most people thought, unless the victim was a professional boxer or someone else who took blows to the head on a regular basis. People like that tended to have somewhat damaged brains to begin with. Annie wouldn't, couldn't, go down that easy, no, but Armin was big enough that he could have made a decent go at it. It might have killed her instead, but so what? Why didn't he at least try it?
The answer hit her with stomach-jarring force. Brain damage.
Armin had to be smart enough to know it was basically impossible to knock any normal person unconscious without killing them or at least causing a touch of brain damage. Those were also two things that wouldn't happen if he cut her head off at the neck. She would still be alive for a few hours at least, her brain functioning perfectly fine until the last five minutes. That's when it would finally starve to death for want of energy, like the way three-dimensional maneuver gear works fine until the moment it runs out of gas.
Too impossible to hope for, yet all she had left to cling too, it was her faint hope that the boy that she loved, the boy that once claimed to love her, would cut her head off and that she would somehow survive it.
Armin always has a plan. He'll keep my head alive, keep me alive, he'll know how to make me regenerate my body. He always has a plan... I just have to play along, right? Right?
She wiped tears from her eyes and nodded to herself. She leaned forward, holding her head in her hands. Gently, she swept aside the unkempt hair that cascaded around the back of her neck, giving the young man an easier target.
Armin walked away and knocked three times on the cell door. A moment later, the food slot opened and a sword hilt, separated from its maneuver gear, was thrust butt-first into Armin's waiting hand. A standard titan-staying blade had been affixed to the other end.
How fitting.
The young captain walked slowly to her side. He squeezed her shoulder, then let his fingers trail down her arm to her hand, where he held it tightly. She squeezed back just as tightly, an unspoken agreement between the pair to not let go until the end.
She tried not to flinch when she felt the cold steel sliding on the back of her neck, but failed miserably. She tightened her grip on his hand and so did he. That spot, the nape, had very a particular sensitivity to the girl. Just resting the weapon in place drew blood.
"Armin..."
"Yeah?"
"Don't swing, you know?" she said carefully, "You want to be sure that you'll get my neck, so you should really saw from there, not swing and maybe miss."
Though she kept her eyes tightly shut, it wasn't hard to tell that Armin kept shedding tears. She could even hear him wiping at his nose after every few words. "What? Annie... I... I really want to... to make this quick, not slow and painful..."
"No, Armin, no. You have to be strong," she said, "You have to do what you have to do. Cut my neck, right? Be sure not to miss, right?"
He nodded, she assumed.
"Push down. When you meet bone, slide the blade along the vertebrae. Find a gap. Push through the gap, hard. Do this all very quickly. Got it?"
"Yeah..." he said.
"On three."
"Okay." he replied.
"Promise?"
"Yeah, I promise." he said.
"One."
"Annie, there's something-"
"Two."
"-you should know that I love-"
"Three!"
…
I think this is called an omake, but I'm still not sure:
…
"Mikasa! How long do we have to be like this?"
The pale, dark-haired girl crossed her legs and glared at Annie from where she sat on the couch. It was almost exactly the way she remembered it from training.
Some things never changed. Other things, like height and build, did change. Mikasa Jaeger wasn't an inch below six-feet tall in her bare feet and looked even meaner than she had the last time they met, if such a thing was possible. Annie might have been able to take the Jaeger woman in a fight when they were the same age and skill level, but now...
Annie narrowed her gaze at the young woman. She desperately wanted to get up from the love seat where she and Armin sat and kick Mikasa square in the face, just for old-times sake, but she knew her young captain would never allow it. He wouldn't understand that that's just how the two of them said hello.
At first, Annie had been worried that Mikasa would be a lot less forgiving about the whole situation, but the young Asian loved Armin like her own child and would never do anything to upset him. Beyond that, well, Annie and Mikasa also shared a history that lent itself to a certain mutual understanding that they boys knew about but didn't dwell on. Suffice to say that, although Mikasa had more of a reason to be upset at her betrayal than anyone else save Armin, she also had an equally pressing need to seek understanding from the blonde.
For the moment at least, Mikasa was willing to put aside any differences and inquests into her betrayal in favor of filling Annie in on exactly what the hell was going on with her most current predicament.
"Annie?" Armin asked, turning to the blonde girl, his face so close he bumped her nose with his, "It's not that bad, is it?"
"No, no, babe, it isn't" she stammered, forcing a smile, "It's just that I kinda want to be able to move around on my own, you know?"
Armin smirked before kissing her on the lips; a quick peck, but it still meant a lot to her.
"About a week," said Mikasa, "until your body grows back completely. That's how long I had Eren."
"Oh, a week until my whole body grows back? That's not so bad," said Annie, "How the hell does this even work?"
"Your regenerative abilities make it possible," said Armin, "Hanji just attached your, uh, loose ends. Arteries to arteries, veins to veins, muscles to muscles. Even your nerves have automatically attached themselves. We didn't think they'd do that."
"I'm not actually that surprised," said Annie.
"She didn't even have to be that precise with the operation," said Armin, "Your own tissues did ninety percent of the work."
"This could be kinda fun, actually," said Annie.
"It was for me," the young woman said, "The best part of the whole thing is that he gets to eat for two. I did that once for Carla and once for Eren. You're just lucky you two were the same blood type."
"Yeah," Annie sighed, "If we weren't, I don't think anyone else would have been willing to do something like this for me."
"Nonsense," said Mikasa, "Either Connie or Sasha would have. Jean might have. Hanji would have done it just to say she did it, and I certainly would have."
"Thanks Mika, that's sweet," she said, and she meant it.
The young woman's only response was to cover her blushing cheeks with her scarf.
Annie raised an eyebrow. "Then why should I feel so lucky that Armin and I have the same blood type, if there were so many people willing to do this?"
Mikasa pulled down the scarf and gave the girl a look that said 'seriously?' "Who else would you rather have your severed head attached to at the shoulder?"
"Good point," she said. Turning to the side, she bopped Armin's nose with hers and the pair kissed again for what must have been the fiftieth time that day.
...
So, I have this, I have my HS AU, I have my 'Orange Is The New Black' one-shot, and I have my 'Titanfall' one-shot.
I'm asking you for your preferences. Please let me know.
Please review. Fav and follow if you like it.