Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

The name came from Reiner, three days after Annie’s crystallization, delivered in the flat, careful voice of a man handing over something he knew might get people killed.

"Ymir Fritz," he said. "No relation to the founder, just an unfortunate name to grow up with. She’s maybe fourteen. Marley keeps her in a labor camp outside the internment zone — officially for ’family monitoring purposes.’ Unofficially, she’s collateral. Has been since before Annie ever left for these walls."

"You knew this the whole time," Armin said, something sharper than accusation in his voice.

"I knew Annie had a sister. I didn’t know exactly how Marley was using her until Annie told me herself, the night before the attack." Reiner’s jaw tightened. "She came to me. Asked if there was any way out that didn’t end with either her sister dying or Eren dying. I didn’t have an answer for her. I still don’t."

Eren stared at the crude map Reiner had sketched, the location of the labor camp marked with a small, precise x. "If we could reach her. Get her sister somewhere safe—"

"It’s inside Marleyan territory, Eren. Fortified, guarded, and roughly two thousand kilometers past any ground the Survey Corps has ever operated on." Armin’s voice carried the particular strain of a boy doing math he already knew wouldn’t work. "This isn’t a rescue mission. It’s a suicide mission with an outside chance of also being a rescue mission."

"Then we make the odds better." Mikasa’s voice cut through the room, flat and absolute. "We’re not leaving her sister in that camp as leverage against Annie for the rest of the war. That’s not a strategy, that’s cruelty, and I refuse to let it keep working."

Erwin listened to the proposal with his usual unreadable calm, fingers steepled beneath his chin as Eren laid out everything Reiner had provided.

"You understand what you’re asking," Erwin said finally. "A covert operation, deep into hostile territory, based entirely on intelligence from a soldier who spent two years actively working against this organization’s interests."

"I understand it’s a risk."

"It’s more than a risk, Yeager. It’s the kind of operation that gets entire squads killed for a single, uncertain objective." Erwin’s sharp eyes studied him for a long moment. "Convince me it’s worth that cost."

Eren met his gaze steadily, two years of hard-won conviction settling into his voice. "Because Annie chose not to kill me, even with the opening to do it. Because Reiner chose us over his own mission, months before he ever had to. Because every single defector Marley’s sent against us has shown some capacity to choose differently, when given an actual reason to." He leaned forward. "If we save her sister, we prove that choosing differently doesn’t just get you executed by Marley or abandoned by us. We prove there’s an actual third option. That’s not just about Annie, sir. That’s about every future soldier Marley sends who might be looking, quietly, for a reason to defect instead of fight."

Silence stretched through the room, Erwin’s expression unreadable, until finally, slowly, he nodded.

"A small team. Volunteers only. I won’t order anyone into that kind of danger." His eyes swept the room. "Who’s willing?"

Every hand in the room went up before he’d finished speaking.

The team that finally departed three weeks later numbered six — Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Reiner, and two seasoned Survey Corps scouts whose names Eren would come to know intimately across the brutal weeks ahead. They traveled by ship, disguised as merchants, Reiner’s knowledge of Marleyan customs and checkpoints the only thing standing between them and immediate discovery.

"This is insane," Armin muttered, watching the unfamiliar coastline of Marley’s mainland finally come into view. "We’re actually doing this. We’re actually infiltrating Marley."

"You could have stayed," Eren said.

"And let you three have all the terrifying, life-altering adventures without me? Absolutely not." Armin’s nervous energy didn’t fully hide the fierce determination underneath. "Besides. Someone needs to keep records. I intend to survive specifically to write an excellent, detailed account of this later."

Mikasa, standing at Eren’s other side, said nothing, but her hand found his over the ship’s railing, steady despite the mounting danger of everything ahead.

"Whatever happens," she said quietly, "we get her sister out. Then we get ourselves out. In that order, no exceptions."

"No exceptions," Eren agreed, and felt the weight of the promise settle heavy and certain in his chest.

The camp, when they finally reached it after four grueling days of careful, silent travel through unfamiliar territory, proved smaller than Eren expected — a cluster of squat buildings behind reinforced fencing, guards patrolling in predictable, exploitable patterns that Reiner walked them through with the ease of someone who’d studied exactly this kind of installation for years.

"Shift change in eleven minutes," Reiner whispered, crouched low in the treeline overlooking the camp. "That’s our window. In and out before the next patrol cycle begins."

"And if it goes wrong?" one of the scouts asked.

"Then we improvise, the same way we’ve improvised through everything else this year," Eren said, checking his gear one final time. "Mikasa, Armin — with me. Reiner, you know this place better than any of us. Lead the way."

They moved when the window opened, fast and silent, Reiner’s knowledge of the camp’s layout proving flawlessly accurate as they slipped past patrol routes and reached the small, cramped building housing the camp’s youngest detainees.

Ymir Fritz, when they finally found her, looked nothing like the fourteen-year-old Eren had expected — smaller, thinner, eyes carrying a wariness far too old for her age, though something in her expression sharpened into cautious hope the moment Reiner spoke her name.

"You’re Annie’s friends," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "She told me, once, in a letter smuggled through — that if anyone ever came for me claiming her name, to trust them completely."

"We’re getting you out," Eren said. "Right now. Can you walk?"

"I can run, if that’s what this actually requires."

It was, and she did, the small group moving fast through the dark camp with Ymir’s surprising resilience matching their own desperate pace, alarm bells finally sounding behind them as they cleared the outer fence with barely seconds to spare.

They ran until their lungs burned, until the camp’s lights faded into distant, harmless specks behind them, until finally, exhausted and disbelieving, they collapsed into a hidden ravine well beyond any pursuit’s immediate reach.

"We did it," Armin gasped, disbelief cracking through his exhaustion. "We actually did it."

Ymir sat trembling against a rock, the reality of her sudden freedom clearly still settling in, and Eren crouched before her, gentling his voice as much as the aftermath of their desperate flight allowed.

"You’re safe now," he said. "We’re taking you somewhere Marley can’t reach you. Somewhere your sister will be able to find you again, once we’ve figured out how to bring her back safely too."

Ymir’s composure finally broke, tears cutting through months of careful, frightened control. "She’s really alive? Annie’s really—"

"She’s alive," Mikasa confirmed gently. "She made a choice, recently, that I think we’re only beginning to understand the full cost of. But she’s alive, and I believe, given the chance, she’ll choose you over anything Marley’s still holding over her."

The weight of the successful mission settled slowly over the exhausted group, relief and disbelief tangling together as the adrenaline of their desperate escape finally began to fade.

Later, once Ymir had finally fallen into exhausted sleep against Armin’s careful watch, Eren found a quiet moment alone with Mikasa at the edge of their hidden camp, the vast unfamiliar sky of Marley stretching dark and star-scattered above them.

"We actually did something impossible tonight," he said quietly, disbelief still coloring his exhausted voice.

"We did." Mikasa leaned into him, her own exhaustion evident despite the fierce satisfaction underneath it. "I keep thinking about what you told Erwin. About proving there’s a third option, beyond simply fighting or dying." She looked up at him, moonlight catching the pride in her expression. "I think we actually managed to prove it tonight, Eren. Whatever comes next, whatever this costs us eventually — tonight, we proved something worth every risk it took to get here."

He pulled her close, kissing her slowly beneath the unfamiliar stars of an enemy nation, feeling the fierce, hard-won triumph of the night settle warm against months of devastating losses and impossible fights.

"I love you," he murmured against her lips. "However far this war eventually takes us, however many more impossible missions it demands — I want to keep proving exactly this kind of impossible thing, with you, for as long as we both manage to survive it."

"Then we will," she said, certain and unshaken despite the vast, dangerous unknown still surrounding them. "Together. However far it takes us."

Above them, the unfamiliar stars of Marley’s night sky stretched on, indifferent to the small, fierce victory two people had just carved out of impossible circumstances — a girl saved, a family’s cruel leverage broken, and a love strong enough to carry two exhausted soldiers through the heart of enemy territory and back out again, together, exactly as they’d promised each other they always would be.

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