Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

The mock battle exercise arrived without warning, the way Shadis clearly preferred to run every major assessment in the Training Corps — no preparation time, no gentle buildup, just an announcement at morning formation that today’s drills would determine squad rankings for the rest of the year.

"Pair off," Shadis barked, striding down the assembled recruits with a clipboard that seemed to promise nothing but bad news for whoever ranked lowest. "Wooden blades, protective gear, full contact within reason. I want to see who actually thinks under pressure and who just memorized the motions well enough to fool me in ordinary drills."

Eren found himself paired, by ill fortune or Shadis’s deliberate design, against a broad-shouldered recruit named Reiner Braun — a boy from a district Eren didn’t recognize, quiet and watchful in a way that reminded him uncomfortably of Kessler’s careful stillness.

"Don’t hold back," Reiner said, settling into a ready stance with unusual seriousness for what was, ostensibly, only a training exercise. "I’ve heard things about you, Yeager. I want to see if they’re true."

"What kind of things?"

"That you move like someone who’s already fought for his life more than once." Reiner’s eyes were sharp, assessing in a way that felt less like curiosity and more like evaluation. "That’s rare, for someone who’s never left the walls."

Something about the observation prickled at the back of Eren’s neck — too specific, too knowing for an ordinary recruit’s idle comment — but Shadis’s whistle cut off any chance to press further, and the exercise began before he could untangle the unease properly.

Reiner fought efficiently, controlled and disciplined in a way that spoke of training well beyond ordinary Training Corps drilling, and Eren found himself working harder than he expected to hold ground, the reflex enhancements humming steady under his skin the only thing keeping the exchange even remotely competitive.

"You’re better than the rumors suggested," Reiner said, breathing hard as they broke apart after a particularly grueling exchange, some genuine respect coloring his voice now. "Most recruits your age wouldn’t have lasted this long against me."

"Most recruits my age haven’t had my motivation."

"What motivation is that?"

Eren didn’t answer, driving forward instead with a strike Reiner barely deflected in time, and the exercise ended a few minutes later in a technical draw that left both boys breathing hard and Shadis making a note on his clipboard with an expression Eren couldn’t quite read.

Mikasa’s match, meanwhile, had drawn the largest crowd of the day — pitted against a recruit named Annie Leonhart, a small, quiet girl whose economical, brutal fighting style had already earned its own reputation among the barracks despite her keeping almost entirely to herself.

Eren arrived in time to watch the final exchange, and what he saw made his stomach tighten with something between admiration and unease.

Annie fought like someone who’d been drilled since infancy in exactly the kind of efficient, joint-locking style that wasted no motion at all, and for the first time since arriving at Trost, Eren watched Mikasa genuinely struggle to find an opening, both girls circling each other with the careful, dangerous patience of people who understood exactly how much damage the other was capable of doing.

The match ended in a draw as well, both girls backing off simultaneously by unspoken mutual agreement, breathing hard, something like respect passing between them despite neither cracking a smile.

"You’re good," Annie said afterward, voice flat and unreadable, studying Mikasa with an intensity that made Eren’s old instincts prickle uncomfortably.

"So are you." Mikasa’s tone matched Annie’s flatness precisely. "Where did you train, before this?"

Something flickered behind Annie’s eyes — calculation, quickly hidden. "Family taught me. Nothing formal."

"Interesting family."

"You could say that." Annie turned and walked off without further comment, leaving Mikasa staring after her with an expression Eren recognized instantly — the same careful cataloguing she did with everything that didn’t quite add up.

"She fights like Reiner," Eren said quietly, once Annie was out of earshot. "Too disciplined. Too controlled for someone who’s supposedly never left the walls."

"I noticed." Mikasa’s eyes stayed on Annie’s retreating back. "You think it’s connected? To Marley, to the Coordinate, to everything your father’s been warning us about?"

"I don’t know yet. But I intend to find out." He rubbed at the ache already forming from his own match with Reiner. "Too many coincidences are stacking up around us for any of it to actually be coincidence anymore."

They compared notes that evening, the three of them crowded into a quiet corner of the mess hall long after most recruits had drifted off to sleep, Armin’s notebook already filling with fresh theories at record pace.

"Reiner and Annie," Armin murmured, scribbling quickly. "Both unusually skilled. Both quiet about their backgrounds. Both, if I’m reading the timing right, transferred into this year’s recruits from districts nobody seems to actually recognize when asked directly."

"You asked around?"

"Of course I asked around. Someone has to do the actual investigative work while you two are busy having dramatic training-ground revelations." Armin’s tone carried genuine urgency beneath the usual teasing. "I think we need to be careful around both of them. Not hostile — we don’t know enough yet to justify hostility — but careful. Watchful. The same way we’d watch Kessler, if he were suddenly enrolled as a fellow recruit."

Mikasa’s jaw tightened. "You think they’re connected to Marley. To whatever your father fled from."

"I think it’s possible. I don’t have proof yet." Armin closed the notebook, expression serious in a way that had grown more common since he’d taken on the role of the group’s careful researcher. "But given everything we already know is converging around Eren — the Coordinate, Kessler’s warnings, your own unexpected inheritance — I’d be more surprised if there weren’t other pieces of this puzzle scattered among three hundred recruits than if there were."

Eren sat with that a long moment, the countdown in his chest ticking a fraction louder with the addition of two more unknowns to an already crowded field of variables.

"Then we watch," he said finally. "Carefully. And we keep training, keep preparing, and we don’t let suspicion turn into recklessness before we actually understand what we’re dealing with."

"Agreed." Mikasa’s hand found his under the table, steady despite the new uncertainty settling over their small circle. "We’ve survived worse surprises than two skilled recruits with quiet backgrounds. We’ll survive this too."

Later, alone with her on their usual strip of ground behind the barracks, Eren found himself turning the day’s revelations over with a heaviness he hadn’t quite managed to shake.

"Reiner said something odd, during our match," he admitted. "That he’d heard things about me. That I fight like someone who’s already fought for his life more than once."

Mikasa went very still beside him. "That’s an unusually specific observation, for an ordinary recruit."

"That’s what I thought too." He exhaled slowly, the weight of two years of secrets threatening to feel heavier again despite months of finally sharing them. "I don’t know if it means what I’m afraid it might mean. But I don’t like how much it sounds like he already knows something about me that he shouldn’t."

"Then we find out. Carefully, like Armin said." She took his hand, grounding him the way she always managed to, no matter how strange the day’s revelations had gotten. "You’re not facing whatever this turns out to be alone, Eren. Whatever Reiner and Annie actually are — allies, enemies, or something more complicated than either — we face it together, the same as everything else."

He looked at her, moonlight catching the steady certainty in her eyes, and felt some of the day’s unease ease into something more manageable.

"How do you always make impossible things sound survivable?"

"Practice. You’ve given me a lot of impossible things to practice on." A small smile, warm despite the tension of the day. "Besides. I meant what I told you at the mill, at the well, on every rooftop since. I’m not going anywhere, no matter how complicated the puzzle gets. That’s not a promise with an expiration date."

He pulled her close, resting his chin against her hair, and let the simple, steady fact of her presence anchor him against the mounting uncertainty of Reiner’s too-knowing eyes and Annie’s too-disciplined fighting style and a Coordinate whose full meaning he still didn’t fully understand.

Eighty-six days remained on the countdown he’d carried for nearly two years.

Whatever Reiner and Annie turned out to be, whatever new pieces of the puzzle they represented, he intended to face them the same way he’d faced everything else — with Mikasa’s hand in his, Armin’s careful research at his back, and a stubborn refusal to let this second chance slip away from him the way the first one had.

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