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

The Blood Of A Chicken

Another year passed. Eren, now seven years old, had the skill level of an experienced surgeon in medicine. He had also managed to create many new medical mixes that had useful applications, one of which, being a digestible syrup that helped suppress motion-sickness. It had gotten lots of thanks from his father clients after they were introduced to it, so he was quite satisfied by it.

After learning all he could about the human body theoretically, Eren began to conduct experiments on living creatures, starting from rats he captured. He injected them with many medical mixes, tracked and wrote down the process and results, and overall had fun doing it. It was a shame that some hurt the lab-rats, but they were free to try to escape, not that they could manage to do so with how well he locked them up.

With the start of his experiments, Eren's perspective towards living beings changed. Whenever he saw a bird flapping its wings, his tongue salivated, his instincts begging him to study and replicate its bone structure to enable flight for humans. Whenever he saw fish, his mind searched for ways humans could breathe in the water, for example, surgically attaching artificial gills to a human's neck. He was turning into Hanji, but somehow, it wasn't a bad feeling.

With his change in thought process, the look in his eyes changed. The Eren who was only obsessed with the feeling of freedom and the outside of the walls had now completely disappeared, replaced with an Eren interested in absolutely everything around him. He spent hours contemplating the simplest of things and how to adjust them. Every day, he woke up as early as he could, grabbed his pouch, and didn't come back home until sunset. Sometimes he even went out on midnight excursions, under the careful watch of one of his parents, and observed everything about nightlife he could.

This interest in him was understandable. As a person who had eradicated many species in his past life and was left entirely alone, he was interested in living beings and how they lived. Just seeing a living being was already joyful for him, let alone this many? It was paradise (Author's note: see what I did there?) for Eren.

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In another ordinary day, Carla asked for Eren to buy some chicken from the market for dinner. With how poor Shiganshina citizens were, that meant buying living chicken and killing them by themselves. Afterwards, they did bloodletting, de-feathering and cleaning, finally cooking it in the end.

Armin and his grandfather would be visiting them for dinner that night, so Eren called the blond boy a well to get the chicken. Telling the blond where he was going, they rushed to finish the chore to be free of work and do what they always did as soon as possible.

For a low price after haggling expertly, something Eren had learned from his mother, the two grabbed the chicken in a rusty cage and ran back to the brunette's house. Once they arrived, they found Carla hanging the laundry and greeted her cheerfully.

"Mother, we're back!" shouted Eren, waving the cage he carried with one hand.

Armin was a bit shyer, so he reddened while giving a small smile to Eren's mother.

"Hi, Carla-san," he said quietly with a small wave, making Carla smile softly.

"Hello, Armin-kun. Eren-chan is dragging you around as always?"

Her words made Eren pout unhappily.

"Hey, I don't drag him around!" he protested childishly, much to the amusement of his mother. "He comes willingly! Right, Armin?"

Armin scratched at his nose embarrassedly.

"You are a bit pushy..."

Eren gasped dramatically, waving an accusing finger at Armin, acting speechless. He started relaying his betrayal loudly, placing a hand on his heart and another to his forehead and behaving considerably heartbroken, breaking Armin's shy demeanour and causing him to snicker and argue back, making Carla smile proudly.