A Sinner With A Smile // An AOT Time Travel AU

An Unnecessary Conflict

It was a week after the return of the Survey Corps that Eren and Armin bumped into Jim and his followers again. It was a total accident, where both parties were at the market, shopping, and coincidentally visited the same shop at the same time.

Jim raised his hand, pointing at the two in front of him, his face a mixture of horror and fear.

"Jaeger, Arlert! What are you doing here?"

Eren merely blinked to show his surprise, deciding that a dramatic response wasn't worth spending the energy. Armin showed shock in his face, but calmed fast, acting as if they hadn't been the bullies who had beat him up for years, but strangers.

Seeing his friend's choice of reaction, Eren smiled in amusement and chose to respond to the other group. His eyes slit like crescent moons, and his smile became one with a fox's. All in all, he did not look like a five-year-old at all. Instead, he was more like an experienced businessman.

"What a surprise to meet you here," he told them, sending shivers down their spines with his carefree tone. "Were you sent shopping by your parents as well?"

In Shiganshina, a poor district, children started helping their families at a young age. When they reached a certain amount of strength, they would be introduced to simple chores, like shopping or preparing dinner. This way, the family was able to balance out their amount of work and didn't overtire.

One of the lackeys crossed his arms, huffing.

"So what if we are? What's it to you?" he asked snobbishly, seeming offended and embarrassed. Eren didn't understand why. Everyone their age did small chores like this, what was there to be so defensive about?

Instead of voicing his thoughts, his smile widened a tad bit, and he opened his arms in a gesture of peace.

"I did not mean to offend you," he reassured the boy. "After all, I am doing the same thing myself. I wouldn't insult myself, would I?"

His words seemed to have made sense for the boy, and he calmed down, though his scowl did not ease in the least. He clicked his tongue and looked away, acting like seeing them was sullying his eyes.

Not wanting to get into needless conflict, Eren and Armin walked away, but were stopped by several teenagers blocking their way. Eren shifted in front of Armin slightly in protection, and as one of the teenagers took a step forward, a malicious glint in his eyes, he knew this was the right decision.

"So you're the brat who hurt my younger brother?"

This sentence brought Eren dismissed memories, and he was enlightened about the cause of these actions. He scarcely remembered Jim having an elder brother from his previous life, despite not meeting the mentioned person once. The only reason he had ever heard of him was, in fact, because the teen in front of him had gotten in conflict with the police, then imprisoned. It was revealed later that the then man was involved in smuggling drugs, and he had never exited prison until the day Shiganshina had fallen.

Due to his age, even if he had survived, he would have been sent to 'take back Shiganshina', a suicide mission to decrease population due to lack of resources, that had cost Armin his sole family, his grandfather, so there was no way he had survived.

This was all he knew about the teenager in front of him, which only told him that he was most probably a hooligan at this point in time.

"Elder brother!" cried out Jim, sounding both surprised and relieved. It seemed he had felt threatened by the two best friends' presence, which was not unusual, seeing as one of them was a budding tactical genius, and the other, a mass murderer.