Angel clenched his fist.
Still, if that’s what their footsteps sound like…
Angel doubted his own ears. The roaring sound of the steadily approaching footfalls in no way resembled human steps. It was like the sound of an earthquake, and in truth, the ground faintly rumbled. It was proof of the Titans’ unbelievably large size.
They’re like walking disasters.
As soon as he compared them to natural threats, the once vague, ghost-like Titans suddenly seemed more real. Titans weren’t imaginary monsters. They were real dangers to mankind. Angel’s personal definition of the Titans was quickly rewritten, but as soon as it was, a shiver ran through his body. A cold sweat ran down his back, he broke out in goose bumps, and deep inside his chest, he felt his heart begin to pound. His instincts were sounding a warning.
Step by step, the Titan continued to approach, accompanied by a quaking sound. Despite the sluggish cow-like pace, the distance between Angel and the Titan shrank slowly but surely.
The Titan’s footsteps suddenly stopped. Perhaps the Wall had gotten in its path.
It’s about to attack.
Angel steeled himself and focused his senses on the Titan’s movements but picked up close to nothing.
“It’s not doing anything?” Angel furrowed his brow. “I was sure it was going to try to break down the Wall.”
This belief, however, was probably nothing more than the result of an ignorant bias, and Angel must have projected his own images of how a Titan would act onto the one on the other side of the Wall.
I suppose if they really were smart enough to be able to do something to the Wall, mankind would already be extinct.
Angel looked up at the towering Wall Maria.
“Thanks be to Wall Maria, I see.”
“Have you started to get a better idea of why this is here?”
“A better idea than I had wanted.”
“Do you still think that the best defense is a good offense?”
“Aren’t you a mean one.”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
Angel shrugged his shoulders at Maria as she grinned. His nerves had calmed a bit, perhaps due to their exchange. The people of the town, too, had started to recover from the shock of the sudden bombardment. Some may have even mistook it as celebrating the Survey Corps’ return.
“Why don’t we go see Solm.”
Right as Maria spoke, a single drop of rain hit Angel’s cheek. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and looked up at the sky. It was covered in thick clouds that seemed ready to burst.
“So it really does rain when people are grieving.”
“Looks like we might get some showers…”
Blocking out the sun’s rays with her hand, Maria looked at the gray sky. It had started to sprinkle. At this rate, there would be a downpour soon.
We should probably get moving.
Right as Angel thought this, a black, round object entered his field of vision.
“A bird?” Angel thought for a moment, but he immediately changed his mind. No bird was that round.
“Dodge!!”
The sudden voice that shouted down from above froze Angel’s body. The shout had come from a Garrison soldier on top of the wall.
Dodge?!
He must have been referring to the black, spherical mass, but Angel couldn’t tell what kind of dangerous object it could have been. Even if he could, he didn’t have enough time to react. The mass fell toward, then crashed into the stone pavement a few meters in front of him.
“Take cover!!”
Angel and Maria both flattened themselves on the ground. While it still could have been some sort of bomb, the mass splattered like a ripened fruit, spraying the area with whatever unknown substance was inside.
“That’s…”
It had been flattened by the impact, but they could tell what the fallen object was.
“It’s…a head…”
While it barely resembled its original shape, it was still clear. Its eye sockets were sunken in, its nose had been sliced off, and its mouth was still visible despite having no lower jaw. Its hair must have made it look black as it flew through the air, and the substance that had come from it was some sort of mixture of brains, bone fragments, and bodily fluids. The unbearably gruesome sight caused the contents of Angel’s stomach to climb back into his throat. The moment his stomach juices spread across his mouth, Angel covered it with his hand and retched, though he somehow managed to keep from vomiting.
“What… What’s going on?”
As he stood confused, a woman approached him with an unsteady gait. It was Elena.
“Oh, so this is where you were dawdling?”
Elena walked up to the severed head and crouched down with no regard for the filth that would get on her dress. She peeled the head off of the ground it clung to, then held it to her bosom.
“No wonder you were late.”
Elena let out a grotesque cackle.
“Is that…her husband’s?”
“I’d have to check to make sure, but I’m pretty sure it is…”
Elena continued to mumble toward the hunk of flesh, apparently unable to register his death.
But why would a head come from the sky?
When Angel looked up, searching for an answer, he saw something that made his eyes grow wide. Countless severed heads were flying through the sky like shooting stars. One distorted flower after another bloomed on the ground as the heads flew in from outside the Wall. As this happened, screams started to come from all around.
“Are Titans throwing the heads over?”
It was strange, but the bizarre situation would then make sense.
“But why heads…”
“There’s no reason.”
“What do you mean?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“They eat because they want to. They throw away what they don’t like. That’s it.”
“But then─”
Angel was about to continue, “They’re no different from humans,” but he swallowed his words. He couldn’t allow himself to admit something like that. As he struggled to deepen his understanding of the Titans’ actions, more heads continued to rain down.
“Damn it! Do they think they’re playing horseshoes or something?!” Angel cursed as he spit each word out.
Fortunately, no one was hurt by the heads, but the ground and nearby structures were now filthy, stained with splattered brains, bodily fluids, and chunks of meat. The scene was so repulsive that it felt otherworldly.
The hellish image must have struck fear in the people. The crowd that had assembled to celebrate the Survey Corps’ return was now scattering in confusion, screaming. It was a natural reaction to an event as unimaginable as human heads raining from the sky.
The heads eventually stopped, either out of choice or because there were none left to throw. Still, the people had been gripped by fear, and it was only a matter of time before they would be in a state of panic.
You think you can just do whatever you want?
Even Angel wasn’t able to keep calm, but there was one group that could and did. The Survey Corps. They stood firm and unflinching despite the horrifying spectacle that was taking place before them. It was proof of their intense training, as well as of the many other difficulties even crueler than this that they had overcome.
But even among these courageous soldiers, one man stood especially tall.
Jorge Piquer.
The statuesque, majestic man was a squad leader in the Survey Corps. Jorge grabbed a flare gun from his waist, pointed it to the sky, then pulled the trigger without hesitation. A flash of light shot out from the muzzle, accompanied by a report. A bright light like the sun itself came from the shot as it exploded in mid-air.
“A White Star…”
The charge that had been loaded into the flare gun was known as a White Star. While it was normally used for illumination at night and as a signal to other soldiers, it was now being used to draw the attention of the panicking city residents. They stopped in place, all looking up to the light in the sky.
For a moment, everything around was quiet. Jorge jumped on this opportunity and went into action.
“Calm down! Calm down!!”
His voice, even louder than the flare gun’s report, spread through the people to incredible effect. One after another, they began to come back to their senses, as if he had exorcised them of a demon. For a man used to commanding groups of brave soldiers, striking sense into regular citizens must have been a simple feat. While the scene had turned into an unexpected display of the Survey Corps’ prowess, now was hardly the time or place for a celebration of their return.
The dripping rain gradually began coming down harder, surely to help wash away the scattered brains.