Choosing Humanity: Attack On Titans

Chapter 1

It is going to be fine.

She repeated what her father had said before he pushed her into a dark tunnel that she hadn't known to exist a few minutes ago. Before he had said that, he had said something else, something that she would understand in the near future.

She was playing in her room with small parts of metals trying to create a device that emitted sounds that normal people couldn’t hear, but she could. Of course she wasn’t normal. If she were, she wouldn’t have had such a hobby, especially since she was just five years old.

He had told her that their lives were being threatened and that she needed to get away safely. To live a happy life, he said, laughing away with people. She wanted to point out that she had never talked to strangers before because he had never allowed her to go out of the house, but something told her this wasn’t the time to argue. Perhaps it was the tears in his eyes.

She had a curious mind and cryptic sentences always annoyed her. She frowned and tried to understand her father’s sentence. With all this thinking, she suddenly remembered what he had mentioned. ‘Their lives were in danger’ and that certainly included him. Then why was she alone? Why didn’t he join her? she thought.

Her mind and thoughts could easily surpass that of an adult, but she was still a child and loved her father dearly. 

Perhaps he was collecting all his research papers. Yes. That made perfect sense and if that was the case then she’d help him too, she thought. She knew she could work more quickly than him and with that thought, she raced back to the door that led to the old storeroom and ran to her father’s study as fast as she could. She had been there countless of times but he had forbidden her from reading his writings so without a second thought, she started stuffing everything that seemed important in her all purpose bag that she had made herself. It was made out of a material that she had invented herself - called Phelt.  It was the strongest material ever known to man and she was proud of it. She smiled at this thought and resumed her work.

She had guessed she would find her father here but he was nowhere to be seen. That was fine. He must have gone to the laboratories. She dropped her father’s journal into her bag that now weighed more than 3 kilograms of nothing but paper and she wasn’t even half way through. She didn’t know what to get so she got everything.  After a little while longer, she had emptied the bookcases and managed to stuff every piece of paper she could find. Good thing she had made many of these durable bags. They weighed over 10 kilograms but she lifted them effortlessly. She was always curious about why her father has so much difficulty in carrying this small amount of weight but he had simply blamed it on his old age and she didn’t ask more. After all, she hadn’t met anyone of her age before. She guessed that they could do the same as she could.

She rounded the corner, hiding in the darkness and witnessed what she wished hadn’t happened. Her father was waving a canister that, if broken, could easily wipe out the entire house and a part of the forest that surrounded it with its explosion. Another one of her many creations, although now, as she watched the scene in front of her, she wished she hadn’t explored the uses of the chemicals. Why was she so curious?

The other man wrestled to get the canister and it dropped from her father’s grip. As it did, the whole area blew up in flames but not before she connected her eyes with her father and saw his small smile for the last time. He mouthed ‘go, I love you’ and waved her away.

Somehow, she knew what would happen next. Something that she later understood as her brains solving numerous calculations and problems and probabilities as a response to the threat she was facing. It was her reflex action. She barely managed to reach the tunnel as everything exploded.

She woke up with a slight headache and with no knowledge of time, she walked ahead, clutching her bags. She was scared at the beginning, not knowing what was happening. The fear slowly turned into anger and guilt. She should have discarded the papers and rushed to her father. She knew he was much slower than her even though she knew her father was quite fit. His old age was seriously keeping him in a big disadvantage. She should have known.

Instead, she had gone after the papers because she knew it was the most precious thing to her father. But she would have gladly traded a thousand bags for her father to be by her side. All she had left were bags full of paper.

As she walked down the seemingly endless tunnel, her thoughts started to eat her up. It was the paper’s fault. If it hadn’t been so important-No. It was her fault. If she had just gone after her father and forgot about the papers, he would have been here. If she hadn’t made that canister, he would have still been there.

It was all her fault.

Her first thought of throwing away the papers turned into wanting to tear herself apart but she kept on going-for her father’s dying wish.