The Month Of May

Chapter 28

IT WAS TIME.

I had already faked symptoms of sickness yesterday as soon as the signal had been sent through. Today was the day to strike once more...Armin's parents were so nice. They were the ones who said I should stay home in the first place. How sweet. My stomach twisted and turned.

How could I do this to such caring people?

...It didn't matter, in the end. This was my destiny. I sat up in bed, pulling my hair into a messy bun as usual. After placing the ring on my finger, I stared at it for awhile longer. My passage to destruction was just a simple little accessory. A simple little piece of jewelry on one of my digits, and all it would cause was destruction...

I had asked to go on a walk, and Armin's parents had let me go willingly while Armin was off at the military. Now I walked through the streets toward an obscure area where no one was. After making sure Erwin's eyes were nowhere to be seen, I took a deep breath and steeled myself.

Then, I flipped open my ring and cut myself with it's hidden spike.

It was instant, just like usual. I felt myself growing larger and larger until I was swallowed into the nape of the giant self around me. My blonde hair fell down, covering my eyes fully. When I finished transforming, I stood at fourteen meters tall with skinless, hardened flesh all over my body.

This was...me.

The one to be known as...the Female Titan.

I could hear the screams of fear echoing below me as little specks the size of ants ran away from me in waves. They were fools to be running from me. Maybe they'd run into a house or something...that would just result in pointless death. If they stuck together, that would be their best chance of surviving.

Well, it wasn't like they could hear me anyway. There was no use trying to give them advice they couldn't hear. So I swallowed my hesitance, and lifted my foot before stomping down onto a house. I hoped that it's residents managed to escape, but if they didn't...well, it was out of my control.

I had to be quick. I could already see military scouts heading my way, ready to cut me down. Funny. They must have been prepared. While I wasn't worried about them harming me, I couldn't risk them seeing me escape, so I quickly began to trample the town, feeling the wood crumble beneath my feet as I crushed houses and bridges.

The screaming was beginning to grow louder as panic began to rise everywhere. As I rampaged through the city, mindlessly swatting away the soldiers who had managed to catch up with me, something suddenly caught my eye.

The shiny silver roof of Armin's house glinted in the bright sunlight. I could see the brown, wooden porch scattered with debris from the other houses and as I watched, Armina and Victor ran out of the house, a terrified look on their once kind faces. My foot stopped lowering as I made sure they safely excavated their domicile. I hesitated. Could I really destroy the house of the boy who cared for me...?

I moved my foot, leaving Armin's house untouched before continuing to trample the area around the city. I could see more and more soldiers arriving, and I knew it was time to stop.

I transformed back as the fog around me blocked everyone's vision of me. I had to be quick- I exited my Titan body that was slowly disintegrating
before running as far as I possibly could. The fog was beginning to lift, so I jumped into the rubble to hide myself.

I was still in my pajamas. Good. That gave me a decent enough cover story; if anyone asked, I was just on my walk, and I had tried to take shelter. I quickly ruffled my hair up a little more before shredding parts of my clothing. I needed to look disheveled.

People were around me, still screaming, but they were beginning to calm down. They were calling out for each other, trying to make sure others were okay. I could hear the loud sob of someone grieving. I must have squished someone.

...Sacrifices had to be made.

This was my path.

"Help!" I shouted out hoarsely, hoping I sounded desperate enough. After a few more calls for help, someone came to dig me out from under the rubble.

"Here. I got you," A blonde man with stubble and a trimmed mustache pulled me out. I could immediately tell he was in the military; from the looks of it, he was one of those that 'guarded' the wall. "Miss, are you alright?"

As he asked that, the person wailing and grieving grew louder, and that was when I saw it. Half of a man was sticking out of a house, the rest of him squished to a bloody pulp underneath the rubble. I winced. I had done that.

"Miss, are you alright?" He repeated.

"Y-Yeah," My voice was shaky and trembling, something I actually didn't need to fake this time. He noticed where my eyes were directed, and he turned me away, a fact I appreciated more than I let on.

"You're not harmed?"

"N-No. I got...lucky."

"Okay. Sit down over there, I have to go help around some more....just stay safe."

The soldier disappeared, and I followed his directions. Strangely enough, as I brought my hands in front of my eyes, I could see that my hands weren't shaking. I was completely still. Numb, perhaps. This wasn't the first sign of death I'd seen before. I've done this before.

It just hurt to see the damage after the fact for the first time.

The chaos continued to partake around me, and as I glanced around, I scanned a better vision of what I had destroyed. An entire world inside of the wall had been smushed, flattened to the ground like a pancake. Wooden planks and crumbled roofs were all that remained of houses. Only a couple of houses had escaped unscathed. One of them was Armin's. I breathed a sigh of relief as I stood and walked back to the house, glad that it was indeed still intact. Most of the houses around it were all destroyed...but at the very least, I had given some sort of thank you, something that made me feel a little bit better about myself. A thank you for allowing a monster into their house.

"Annie!" Armina finally caught sight of me as her and Victor emerged from where they had run off to. "We were so worried-! Armin's on his way back now. Are you hurt? Everything is going to be okay. It is."

"...I know," I replied, for completely different reasons then they thought. Yes, it would be okay. This was for the greater good. "I know."