Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

The response from Grisha arrived faster than expected, terse and urgent in a way that told Eren everything about how seriously his father had taken the warning.

She’s resisting, the letter read. Says she won’t abandon the house on a feeling, not without more reason than a letter can give her. I’m working on it. Give me time. I won’t let this fail, Eren. Whatever it takes.

Five days, according to Reiner. Possibly fewer.

"Time is exactly what we don’t have," Eren said, reading the letter aloud to Mikasa and Armin in their usual corner, voice tight with barely restrained panic. "If he can’t convince her by tomorrow, the day after at the latest—"

"Then we go to her ourselves," Mikasa said, already standing. "Request leave. Tell Shadis whatever we need to tell him. If your father’s words aren’t enough, maybe ours will be."

"They’ll never approve leave this close to squad assignments—"

"Then we don’t ask for approval." Her expression had gone hard, decisive, the same fierce clarity she’d shown facing the boar, facing the Titan, facing every threat that mattered enough to override caution. "I’m not losing your mother to bureaucratic delay, Eren. Whatever it costs us with the Corps, I’ll accept that cost."

Shadis, when they found him, listened to their request with visible surprise before his expression settled into something more complicated.

"Unauthorized leave, five days before assignments, with no official justification I can enter into record," he said slowly. "You understand what that costs, if I approve it. Best case, it delays your postings. Worst case, it ends your careers before they’ve even started."

"We understand," Eren said.

"Do you?" Shadis studied him for a long moment, something searching in his sharp eyes. "This is about the warning you gave me weeks ago, isn’t it. The attack you believe is coming."

"Yes, sir."

Shadis was quiet a long moment, weighing something behind his tired eyes, and when he finally spoke, his voice carried a weight Eren hadn’t expected.

"I’ve reinforced the southern wall based on nothing but your word and my own gut instinct that you weren’t lying to me," he said. "I’ve put my own credibility on the line for a threat I still don’t fully understand. I don’t see much reason to stop trusting you now, when the stakes have apparently gotten personal enough that you’re willing to risk your entire career over it." He signed something quickly, sliding the paper across his desk. "Forty-eight hours. That’s all I can justify without drawing attention that might work against whatever you’re trying to protect. Use it well."

They reached Shiganshina by evening, exhausted from the hard ride Hannes had arranged the moment their letter reached him, and found Carla in the kitchen, mid-argument with Grisha, expression carrying the particular stubborn set Eren recognized from every disagreement he’d ever lost to her.

"Eren—" Her surprise at seeing him melted instantly into alarm. "What’s happened? Why are you here, you should be training—"

"Mom, please." He crossed the kitchen and took both her hands, urgency bleeding into every word. "I need you to trust me. Completely, without needing every detail explained first. We don’t have time for that anymore."

"Your father’s already told me there’s danger coming. I don’t understand why leaving the only home I’ve ever known is the answer, based on nothing but a feeling—"

"It’s not a feeling." Eren’s voice cracked, two years of careful restraint finally breaking under the weight of imminent danger. "Mom, I’ve known this was coming since before I could properly walk. I’ve spent this entire life trying to change it, trying to save you specifically, and I’m asking you now, with days left instead of years, to please just trust me one more time. Please."

Carla stared at him, something shifting behind her eyes — not full understanding, not yet, but a recognition, finally, of the depth of fear driving his desperation.

"Tell me why," she said quietly. "Not everything. Just — enough that leaving my home doesn’t feel like abandoning it for nothing."

Eren looked at Mikasa, who nodded once, granting silent permission for whatever came next, and turned back to his mother with the full weight of two lifetimes’ worth of fear finally, fully surfacing.

"Because I’ve lived this before," he said. "A different life, before this one. I watched a Titan break through the southern wall exactly where our house stands. I watched people I loved die because I didn’t understand what was coming in time to stop it. I have a second chance now, Mom, and I refuse to lose you again, whatever it costs to convince you the danger is real."

The kitchen went utterly silent, Carla’s expression cycling through disbelief, confusion, and finally, slowly, something that looked almost like acceptance.

"That’s an impossible thing to explain," she said finally, voice unsteady.

"I know."

"But you’ve never lied to me. Not about anything that actually mattered." She looked between her son and Mikasa, both of them watching her with matching desperate hope. "All right. I’ll go. Not because I fully understand, but because I trust you enough not to need to."

They spent the remaining hours of that first day packing what mattered most — supplies from the warehouse, the family’s most precious keepsakes, enough provisions to last the journey to the eastern district and whatever came after — Hannes arriving to help coordinate the move under the guise of routine safety precautions that fooled few of the watching neighbors but drew no official suspicion either.

"You’re doing the right thing," Hannes told Carla quietly, hefting a crate onto the waiting cart. "Whatever’s coming, better safe with your family intact than sorry because pride kept you rooted somewhere dangerous."

"I still don’t fully understand what’s coming."

"None of us do, not entirely. But I trust these kids more than I trust most grown soldiers I’ve served alongside." He glanced toward where Eren and Mikasa worked together, loading the last of the supplies with the same efficient partnership that had carried them through boars and Titans and impossible truths. "They’ve earned that trust, this past year. I don’t intend to waste it questioning them now."

By the time the sun set on their first day back, Carla and Grisha were settled, however uneasily, in a modest rented room in the eastern district — far enough from the southern wall to offer real safety, close enough that the family remained together despite the upheaval.

"Thank you," Grisha said quietly, finding Eren alone outside the rented room that evening. "For coming back. For convincing her when my own words alone weren’t enough."

"I couldn’t risk losing her. Not again."

"I know." Grisha’s hand rested heavy on his shoulder, pride and fear tangled together in his tired expression. "You’ve become someone I’m continually surprised by, Eren. Not because I doubted you’d grow into someone capable. Because I never quite believed, until moments like this, how much courage this life would eventually demand of you, and how thoroughly you’d rise to meet it anyway."

That night, back on their old rooftop one final time before returning to Trost, Eren allowed himself a rare moment of quiet relief amid the mounting dread.

"We did it," he said softly. "She’s safe. Whatever happens to the house, to the southern district — she’s safe."

"We did it," Mikasa agreed, leaning into him with visible exhaustion. "One piece of the coming danger, actually changed for the better. That’s not nothing, Eren, however much still waits ahead of us."

He pulled her close, letting the small, hard-won victory settle warm against the mounting fear of everything still approaching.

Five days, maybe fewer, according to Reiner’s warning.

Whatever those days held, Eren understood now, with fresh and fierce clarity, that some outcomes truly could be rewritten with enough courage and enough people willing to fight for them together.

His mother’s safety was proof enough of that. He intended to carry that proof forward into whatever fight still waited on the horizon.

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