The second stranger came during a Garrison inspection, which was, Eren would later think, either very poor timing or exactly the kind of camouflage a careful person would choose on purpose.
"Routine district assessment," the officer leading the group announced to the assembled crowd in the square, voice pitched for maximum boredom. "Nothing to be alarmed about. We’re simply verifying supply reserves and structural readiness across Shiganshina ahead of the autumn drills."
Hannes, standing off to one side in his Garrison uniform looking distinctly unenthused about babysitting paperwork duty, caught Eren’s eye across the square and gave a small, exhausted shrug that said don’t ask me, I just work here.
It should have been nothing. Routine inspections happened twice a year, boring and procedural, mostly an excuse for the Garrison to feel useful between actual emergencies.
Then the flicker hit.
Not the vague stutter of before — this one arrived sharp and specific, a flash of a face Eren didn’t recognize, close to the warehouse door, hand already reaching for the latch.
He was moving before he’d finished processing it.
He reached the warehouse to find one of the inspecting soldiers — young, unfamiliar, clipboard in hand — already crouched at the door, examining the lock with far more interest than a routine assessment warranted.
"Can I help you?" Eren kept his voice light, though his pulse hammered.
The soldier looked up, unbothered. "Just checking storage compliance. Every household’s required to log emergency reserves this cycle." A pause, eyes flicking over the reinforced latch, the slightly-too-solid construction of a door built by someone who’d clearly given it more thought than an ordinary shed required. "Yours looks sturdier than most."
"My father likes things secure."
"Mm." The soldier made a note, unhurried, and Eren couldn’t tell if it was genuine bureaucratic tedium or something more deliberate. "Mind if I take a look inside? Just for the log."
Every instinct screamed no. Every reasonable excuse he could think of sounded, in the half-second he had to produce one, exactly like the excuse of a boy hiding something.
"It’s my father’s storage. I’d need to ask him first."
"Understandable." The soldier straightened, entirely pleasant about it, and made another note. "I’ll come back with him present, then. Standard procedure."
He left without further comment, and Eren stood there long after he’d gone, chest tight, the too-smooth pleasantness of the exchange sitting wrong in a way he couldn’t quite shake.
"You’re doing the pale thing again," Mikasa said, finding him twenty minutes later still standing near the warehouse, jaw tight.
"A soldier wanted to inspect the storage."
Her posture shifted immediately, alert in the way it always went around anything that threatened him. "Did he get in?"
"No. I put him off. He’s coming back with my father." Eren dragged a hand through his hair. "Mikasa, if he sees the maps, the routes marked out — there’s no good explanation for a household stockpiling like we are unless he assumes the worst. Smuggling. Hoarding. Something that gets my father in real trouble."
"Then we move them."
"Move them where? He could come back any minute."
"Somewhere he won’t think to look, because it isn’t inside the warehouse at all." She was already thinking it through, the same calm calculation she’d used against the boar. "The old well cover behind the house. It’s dry, it’s covered, and nobody inspects a well for supply violations."
"That could work." Relief and something warmer flooded through him at once — not just the solution, but the immediacy of her offering it, no hesitation, already moving to help before he’d finished explaining the problem. "You’re terrifyingly good at this."
"I told you. I pay attention." A small, determined smile. "Let’s move. Quickly, before he comes back."
They worked fast, ferrying the most incriminating items — the maps, the hand-drawn routes, a few of the stranger tools Eren couldn’t easily explain — down to the dry well in careful trips, Mikasa keeping watch each time while Eren descended, the two of them falling into an easy, wordless rhythm that made the whole tense operation feel almost like something they’d rehearsed.
"Last one," Eren said, hauling himself back up out of the well with the final bundle, breathing hard.
"You’ve got dirt on your face."
"I’ve had a busy afternoon."
She reached up without asking and brushed a smudge from his cheek, her hand lingering a half-second longer than the task required, and for a moment the tension of the afternoon gave way to something quieter, warmer, neither of them in any hurry to step back.
"Thank you," Eren said. "For not asking a hundred questions. For just — helping."
"You’ll answer the questions eventually. I’ve decided I can wait." Her hand dropped, but she didn’t step away. "Besides. Watching you panic about maps is objectively very funny. I got something out of it too."
"You’re terrible."
"I’m honest." The small smile again. "There’s a difference."
Grisha returned with the soldier an hour later, calm and unbothered in a way that told Eren his father had navigated far more dangerous conversations than this one in his life. The inspection, once conducted, turned up nothing more alarming than a well-organized medical stockpile — reasonable, even commendable, for a doctor’s household.
"Impressively thorough," the soldier admitted, closing his clipboard. "Wish more households took reserves this seriously."
"Occupational habit," Grisha said easily, and saw the man out without a hint of the tension Eren knew had to be sitting somewhere underneath his father’s calm.
Once the soldier was well down the street, Grisha turned to Eren with an expression that mixed relief, suspicion, and something almost like pride.
"The maps weren’t in there."
"No."
"Where are they?"
"Somewhere safer." Eren met his father’s eyes steadily. "I had help."
Grisha’s gaze flicked, briefly, to where Mikasa stood a short distance away, and something in his expression softened. "Good," he said simply, and left it at that — no interrogation, no demand for details, just quiet acknowledgment that his son had handled something dangerous and hadn’t done it alone.
It was, Eren thought, the closest his father had come in a long while to trusting him with something real.
That night, exhausted and still faintly dirt-streaked from the well, Eren allowed himself the daily draw before sleep pulled him under entirely.
[Daily draw available. Spinning...]
[Result: Titan Physiology — Fragment III (Tier 3, Rare). Understanding of nape vulnerability confirmed. 3 of an unknown total fragments collected.]
He sat with that a long moment, the clinical words landing heavier than the previous fragments had. This wasn’t background knowledge anymore. This was the beginning of something he could actually use — a weakness, a target, the first real weapon the system had handed him in exchange for a year of quiet, patient draws.
Three fragments, he thought. How many more until the full picture?
[Query restricted.]
Of course.
He closed his eyes, exhaustion finally winning out, and let his last waking thought settle on something simpler than fragments or strangers or countdowns — Mikasa’s hand on his cheek, brushing away dirt, lingering a half-second longer than it needed to.
One hundred and thirty-six days.
Whatever the system was building toward, whatever the strangers wanted, he thought he finally had two things worth the fight: a weakness in the enemy he’d never truly understood, and a girl who’d stood beside him at the well without asking a single question he wasn’t ready to answer.
That, he decided, was more than he’d had a year ago. It would have to be enough.
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