Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

The next few weeks fell into an uneasy rhythm nobody quite named out loud — training by day, careful watchfulness by night, three uncertain allies-or-enemies weaving in and out of the group’s orbit like storm clouds that hadn’t decided whether to break.

"Squad assignments go up next week," Armin said one evening, poring over a posted schedule with the same intensity he gave everything worth worrying about properly. "Top ten percent get first pick of postings. Everyone’s assuming that means Survey Corps, Garrison, or Military Police."

"You’re assuming Reiner and the others will end up wherever we end up," Mikasa said.

"I’m assuming whoever’s directing them wants them exactly where the Coordinate is. Which means wherever Eren goes, they’ll find a way to follow." Armin tapped the schedule. "Which also means we should think very carefully about which posting actually gives us the most control over that proximity, instead of just assuming Survey Corps is the obvious answer because it’s the most dramatic option."

"It’s not about drama," Eren said. "It’s about actually getting outside the walls. Finding the truth about Marley properly, instead of guessing at fragments secondhand."

"I know that’s your reasoning. I’m just pointing out it’s also, conveniently, the option most likely to get you killed fastest, and I’d like at least one of us to say that plainly before we all charge toward it anyway."

Mikasa’s hand found Eren’s under the table, steady. "We’re going Survey Corps. All three of us. That decision was made a long time ago, Armin. You know that."

"I know. I just like making sure everyone’s said the dangerous part out loud at least once, so nobody can claim later they didn’t know what they signed up for." Armin managed a tired smile. "For the record, I’m still coming. I just reserve the right to complain about it constantly."

"Noted," Eren said, and the three of them let the conversation rest there, the decision settled the way it had been settled, unofficially, for almost two years now.

Annie found Mikasa alone again the following week, this time seeking her out rather than the other way around, catching her during an early morning stretch at the same fence where their first real conversation had happened.

"You’re all choosing Survey Corps," Annie said, without preamble.

"Word travels."

"It’s not hard to guess, watching the three of you." Annie’s expression stayed carefully blank, though something tighter than usual sat behind her eyes. "I need to tell you something, and I need you to actually listen instead of just filing it away as another cryptic warning."

"I’m listening."

"There’s a plan. Something bigger than five rogue Titans breaching a wall by accident." Annie’s voice dropped lower, genuine fear bleeding through the careful control for the first time since Mikasa had known her. "I don’t know all of it. I’m not trusted with all of it, which tells you something about how disposable people like me actually are to the people running this. But I know it’s timed. I know it’s close. And I know Eren’s transformation last month changed the timeline, the same way it changed everything else."

"Changed it how?"

"Faster. Whatever they were planning to do carefully, over years, they’re accelerating now that they have confirmation of what he actually is." Annie’s jaw tightened. "I’m telling you this because I don’t want to be the reason it succeeds. I’ve decided that much, even if I haven’t decided much else yet."

Mikasa studied her carefully, weighing the warning against every instinct that told her caution here mattered more than anywhere else. "Why tell me instead of Eren?"

"Because you’re the one who’ll actually act on it without hesitating, and without needing to process how it makes you feel about people you’ve started to care about first." Something almost like respect flickered behind Annie’s flat expression. "I’ve watched you both. You love him. But you’d still put a blade through anyone who threatened him without a second thought, the moment it actually mattered. That’s not cruelty. That’s clarity. I trust clarity more than I trust good intentions right now."

She walked off before Mikasa could respond, leaving her standing alone at the fence with the same unsettled weight Eren had described feeling after every conversation with Reiner or Bertholt — warning wrapped in genuine, complicated humanity, impossible to simply dismiss or simply trust.

Mikasa relayed the conversation that night, watching Eren’s face carefully as the weight of it settled.

"Faster," he repeated. "So whatever’s coming, it’s not years away anymore. It’s close."

"That’s what she said."

"Did she say how close?"

"No. I don’t think she knows exactly, or she’d have told me. I think she knows enough to be frightened, and not enough to be useful beyond the warning itself." Mikasa’s hand found his, steady despite the mounting dread in the room. "Eren, I think whatever’s coming might arrive before we’ve even finished training here. Before Survey Corps assignment, maybe. Before we’ve had any of the preparation time we’ve been counting on."

Armin, listening with his usual careful focus, closed his notebook with unusual finality. "Then we stop planning for a future timeline and start planning for an immediate one," he said quietly. "I think it’s time we told Shadis. Not everything — we can’t risk that much exposure yet — but enough that the Garrison actually increases readiness instead of assuming they have years to prepare like everyone else seems to believe."

"He won’t believe us."

"He might believe enough to act cautiously anyway. Adults in positions of authority don’t always need full belief to justify increased vigilance. Sometimes ’a credible but unconfirmed threat’ is enough to shift resources without anyone needing to accept the full, strange truth behind it." Armin’s voice carried a new, harder edge than his usual careful theorizing. "We’re not just protecting ourselves anymore, Eren. We’re protecting an entire district that has no idea any of this is coming. I think that changes the calculation about how much risk we’re willing to take, sharing what we know."

Eren looked between his two closest friends, the weight of the coming days settling heavy and immediate in a way it hadn’t quite managed before — not a countdown ticking down toward some distant, theoretical ending, but a clock now audibly, unmistakably running out.

"Sixty-two days," he said quietly. "That’s what I’ve been counting toward this whole time. I don’t think we have that long anymore."

"Then we stop counting toward a number," Mikasa said, "and start preparing for right now, today, whatever tomorrow actually brings instead of whatever we assumed it would." She squeezed his hand, unshaken despite the mounting urgency. "We’ve done harder things than accelerate a timeline, Eren. We do this the same way we’ve done everything else."

"Together," he finished, and for once the word carried less comfort and more grim, focused determination — the sound of three friends and a handful of uncertain allies bracing themselves for a fight that had just, quietly, stopped being theoretical at all.

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