Skeleton Flowers [Shingeki no Kyojin]

✾ Chapter 9 ✾

It had turned out that the Survey Corps, while out on their mission, had received the news about the attack on Wall Rose. They had arrived back swiftly, but they had still been quite late for their own liking. After Eren had managed to get the Wall Rose blocked off from further entrance of the Titans, the rest had been taken care of by the collective effort of Survey Corps and the Garrison engineers.

Following that event, it had taken them up to a full day to deal with the remaining Titans. Every one of that had been trapped within Trost was completely eradicated. The Garrison had fixed canons above the walls and fired down upon the Titans below as they swarmed against the walls for humans. The sounds of those canons had rung through the hours, imprinting onto their brains.

Those Titans who had managed to survive were primarily dealt by the Survey Corps. They had killed all of them aside from two – for humanity had managed to, for the very first time, take one four-metre class Titan and one seven-metre class Titan alive, capturing them in large stocks and pillories.

But even after all of these accomplishments, there was no air of excitement or celebration – there were far too many casualties for anyone to do it. Upto two-hundred and seven individuals were dead or missing, not including the civilians. Eight-hundred and ninety-seven were injured.

When Izanami had received her next orders, they had taken her with them to hurry to the other side of the city where she was informed that she would be helping out in providing first aid to wounded people. Izanami was the only one who had specialised in the field and thus was separated from her friends.

Every injury was worse than the last and Izanami had not even witnessed such traumatic wounds even in the medical books. What made it even harder was the fact that many of them were very much conscious and their body was undergoing severe shock. Izanami had ended up with scratches all over herself from dealing with them.

It was felt almost demoralising as Izanami stood back to watch the carts full of dead or injured soldiers and civilians being taken away toward the humanity's larger medical camps. She wiped the sweat on her forehead and was immediately instructed to head elsewhere to provide first aid.

Even as Izanami rushed in a hurry down the streets, every where that she arrived, she was only informed that it was too late. It felt absolutely crushing – to know that her feet were not as fast as the swing of the Shinigami. Izanami felt like she was living in a nightmare.

As she had been jogging down the street, these thoughts got her inexplicably running into someone. Izanami looked up, fairly disorientated and apologetic but she halted when she noticed the frozen male in front of her – "Jean?"

Jean was standing in the middle of the street. Izanami knew that he had been assigned to dealing with the corpses, but she was unable to see what had made him be like this when they had to hurry and help. She reached out to touch his shoulder to get his attention when she heard his voice –

"Hey... you're... Marco...?"

Ice cold blood rushed through Izanami's veins as she slowly turned her head to look in the direction of Jean's attention. Her dark eyes registered it at once – it was Marco. No. It was what remained of that once highly attentive, fearful yet courageous Marco. His right half had been completely devoured, leaving him thrown against a building ceremonially.

But before Izanami could say anything to Jean or even do anything to comfort him or give any respect to Marco, the two of them were approached by one of the combat medics, "Cadets, do you know his name?"

"I knew I hadn't seen him around..." spoke Jean, undergoing the intensity of the shock at the loss of his friend. "But this couldn't have happened to him... Marco, what happened?" He looked around frantically. "D-Did anyone... did anyone see how he died?" He noticed her. "Did you, Izanami?"