Attack on Titan: Kuklo Unbound

It was the sound of footsteps.

They seemed to come from the north, opposite from where the Survey Corps was headed. Kuklo turned to look north, but all he could make out through the clouds of dust was the hazy form of Wall Maria, the fortress city’s symbol. Yet the footfalls grew rapidly louder as though to assert their presence.

“A Titan is coming…”

“What?” Carlo had caught Kuklo’s muttered words but looked dubious.

“It knows we’re here.”

The distant roar of the footsteps approached, unwavering.

Was it drawn by the flare I fired? It was not known what the Titans reacted to, but a Green Star exploding overhead could easily command their attention.

In a way, Kuklo was fortunate. He’d risked leaving the walls in order to meet a Titan, so this was exactly what he wanted. On the other hand, the trusted Survey Corps being too preoccupied with him to register the situation didn’t do. He needed them to transport him back to town.

Within mere moments, the Titan’s footfalls had grown closer. A dim, human-like outline was now visible in the distance.

“A Titan’s coming.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I hear footsteps. I’ve heard them before.”

“Heard them before?” Carlo sounded suspicious, not seeing how, but he quickly modified his line of questioning. “Which way?”

As Kuklo pointed north with his chin, Carlo, hardly convinced, brought out his binoculars and checked to the north.

Apparently having caught sight of the enemy, Carlo’s face grew grimmer by the second. “That looks like─Ogre…”

He was not the only one to react. Kuklo, the first to recognize the Titan’s approach, wore a frozen look, his eye wide open. His body shook. The reason was plain and simple. “It’s a monster…”

The Titan was still a few kilometers away, its figure blurred like an object in the summer haze, but even then its size was extraordinary, gigantic. That should have gone without saying, but this attacking Titan was far larger than Kuklo had imagined. He realized that all of the information he’d gathered from books had only given him the most basic of understandings. If a picture was ever worth a thousand words, this was when. He couldn’t but think that he hadn’t asked for that.

The Titan charged toward them forcefully, kicking up clouds of dust as it ran. It was a little over ten meters in height. By human standards, it looked like a skinny male around twenty years old. It beamed with joy, perhaps because its first meal in fifteen years had arrived. Despite its gigantic frame, it moved with such nimble steps that it almost seemed ready to take off skipping. It was rushing in at an astonishing speed, fast enough to rival a horse.

It was humanity’s dearest wish to drive away the Titans, to regain the world the monsters had stolen. Yet human hands seemed completely powerless against the huge horror that closed in on them. Seeing it, one wondered if the stories of a Titan being defeated weren’t some sort of misunderstanding.

We’re bugs… Kuklo vividly remembered his days in chains. I’m the same as a bug in a cage…

It was only a difference in scale. Humans were like dishes lining a table to the Titans. All that puny humanity could do was wait patiently to be shoveled into a Titan’s stomach.

“Don’t just stand there! Run!!”

Kuklo’s thoughts were snapped off by Carlo’s bellowed command. By the time Kuklo noticed, the soldiers flanking him were gone, and the Survey Corps was assuming an arrow formation in preparation for retreat. They seemed to be planning to charge straight through.

That they did not have a moment to spare was clear from the surging form that was almost upon them. The footsteps that had sounded like distant thunder were now like the roaring cracks of a storm, and the Titan looked as imposing as Wall Maria itself. Its wicked pressure threatened to crush Kuklo’s spirit and to force him to his knees.

Pounding some life into his chattering knees with his fists, he ran and hopped into the covered wagon at the back of the formation.

“Retreat!!”

At Carlo’s order, the corps began to advance with the force of an unleashed arrow. They must have undergone extensive training in preparation for this expedition. Their immaculately ordered movements resembled a single living being’s.

“Damn it!” Kuklo spat and inspected a few weapons in the cargo, carbines and explosives. His safety assured so long as he stayed with the cargo team? It was the kind of pipe dream thought up by someone with no real combat experience.

Now that he’d seen a Titan with his own eye, he understood.

I am not a Titan.

The confirmation, that he was not a Titan’s son, meant he’d accomplished his goal. But in exchange, his life was now in danger. Mortal danger.

Kuklo sliced through the canvas with his knife and tore it off with all his strength. When he did, gusts came at him from the front. The pressure contorted his face and he found it hard to breathe, so violent was the wind. Kuklo used one arm as a shield and turned a defiant gaze forward. The Titan, about five hundred meters in front of them, maintained its unwavering, nimble sprint.

The soldiers at the tip of the arrow formation drew their short swords. As though sure of their chances, they charged the enemy without a moment’s hesitation.

The Titan responded with a swing of its mighty arm, but the soldiers skillfully maneuvered their warhorses around it, swinging their swords as they passed. Due to the size difference, however, their attacks were concentrated below its knees. Its medulla, known to be the Titans’ weakness, remained completely untouched.

But the commander didn’t seem to be trying to take out their foe. With its legs chopped to pieces, walking looked to have become difficult for the Titan, and its mad rush interrupted, it staggered and fell on one knee. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the troops began to rush past the Titan’s side, the wagon and its stowaway bringing up the rear.

Opening his eye, Kuklo imprinted the image of the Titan onto his mind. It’s a monster… He did not think this only because of its immense size, which defied the laws of nature. Its recuperative abilities were extraordinary, too. Some sort of metabolic reaction seemed to have been triggered, and steam erupted from the sword wounds the soldiers had inflicted, shutting them right away. It might begin to move again at any moment.

There was no doubting that the Titans were absurd monsters. If the soldiers were able to go and fight against one nonetheless, it was not only because they were strong and fearless but because they knew that a Titan could be slain.

While Titan flesh was known to be difficult to so much as scratch, the hard Iron Bamboo-forged blades sliced through it with ease. Without the Equipment they could not mount a direct attack on the Titan’s weak spot, but the soldiers must have felt at least something upon striking a Titan.

In an instant, the wagon passed by the Titan’s side.

A hundred meters, two hundred meters, three hundred meters─

The Titan’s figure was fast fading into the distance, but Kuklo still vividly felt the overwhelming presence, along with the fear, that it had planted in his heart.

He looked ahead. Five kilometers to the gates─an eternity to him, a distance far enough to induce despair. While he did not know the warhorses’ limits, it would surely take five minutes to get there no matter how they whipped and urged them on.

Can we actually escape?! The fact that he had this thought was proof of their precarious situation. Everything was now up to what the Titan did next.

Damn it, he nearly cursed, but the Titan’s condition came first. A hundred or so horses had galloped at full speed and kicked up dust behind them; visibility was so poor it could have been a foggy day. No matter how Kuklo strained his eye, he couldn’t see the Titan.

It may not have been visible, but its presence was painfully clear. Although Kuklo could not glimpse it with his single eye, his hearing rendered its every single movement. He could tell just how the thing rose off the ground to give wild chase to the fleeing column.

“It’s coming…”

The Titan was running four or five hundred meters behind the wagon, hot on their trail. Astonishingly, the Titan had the edge in speed, and little by little it was closing the distance.

Kuklo grabbed a carbine and readied it in imitation of the soldiers. Just as he did, a giant silhouette appeared through the cloud of dust. Noticing it, Kuklo pointed the muzzle at his target and took aim using the front sights. Shooting wildly at it would do no good, though. Aim for its throat…

Praying for the bullet to pierce its weak point, Kuklo pulled the trigger. A powerful burst of recoil caused the barrel to leap in the air, and the bullet flew off at a sorry angle. The result─to be expected from a first-time shooter─may have been on the better side considering that his shoulder wasn’t dislocated.

With no time to be disappointed, Kuklo continued to reload and fire. His approach truly was to spray and pray, but some shots did seem to hit their mark. Whether they had any effect was a different story. The silhouette was growing darker through the dust.

It’s catching up. As anxiety crept over him, a giant head loomed out of the cloud. The bullets must not have hurt or even tickled the Titan. It wore the same cheerful smile it had on when they first met.

Perhaps in reaction to the feast it was nearing, its mouth, which stretched from ear to ear, now hung open. Lined with numerous teeth, the titanic maw almost seemed evolved for the specific purpose of eating humans, and the darkness that spread beyond it smacked of a passageway to hell.

And I was born from there… The sight taught Kuklo why he’d been abhorred as a Titan’s son. It overwhelmed him. He realized that even if he wasn’t related to them by blood, it wasn’t quite true that he had nothing at all to do with the Titans. If people considered him unclean, that wasn’t mysterious in the least.

Kuklo readied the carbine, this time setting its sights on the Titan’s mouth. He pulled the trigger with a firm conviction.

I’m a human being. Not a Titan.

The bullet that flew out of the muzzle shot straight into the gaping mouth. Without so much as altering its expression, the Titan continued its mad pursuit. Nothing short of a cannonball through its stomach seemed able to halt it.

As Kuklo engaged in a futile struggle, the Titan’s full form came into view at last. Waving its arms like a swimmer and clearing away the smoke, the Titan picked up speed for a ferocious rush. They were now about a hundred meters apart, and at the current pace the Titan would catch up in less than a minute.

Kuklo looked to the front, but a little under two kilometers remained to Wall Maria. Its safety was too far off. A number of mounted soldiers, led by a team leader, accompanied the cargo team, but there weren’t enough of them to deal with the Titan as the arrow formation had done. Besides, the soldiers who were meant to protect the wagon were now, ridiculously, riding ahead of it.

Bastards, Kuklo fumed, but as tempered as their bodies and spirits may have been, these crack troops were but sons of men. It wasn’t unthinkable for their souls to shatter in face of a monster.

While they had acquired the know-how to fight a Titan and the armament to bring one down, perhaps the Survey Corps’ time away from actual combat had atrophied their mental fortitude to a shadow of its former self.

Albeit gradually, the wagon was starting to slow. The horse was obviously under strain having to pull the wagon and its cargo. In the worst case, they might be left behind.

This is bad… We can’t get away… Devastated, Kuklo hung his head. He saw a mess of scattered cargo inside the wagon. With so many swords, guns, bullet cases, and rations, there was no place to stand.

Wait, Kuklo suddenly realized. There were no cannons or cannonballs in the cargo so lodging a shot into the Titan’s belly wasn’t an option. But there are a lot of explosives.

Grabbing a grenade that had rolled onto the floor, Kuklo moved to the driver’s seat, where a desperate cargo team soldier was sending his whip into the horse. Though the beast galloped with all of its strength as the soldier demanded, it breathed heavily and was in no condition to perform any better. It seemed like their speed could only dwindle thereafter.

Possibly preoccupied by the incoming Titan, the soldier did not even bother to glance at Kuklo trespassing into the driver’s seat. Instead, he swung his whip doggedly as though straight forward was the only path to survival.

“The horse!” Kuklo pointed at the fiercely galloping animal. The soldier looked puzzled that he would. Unfazed, Kuklo yelled, “Get on the horse!”

“What are you saying?”

“I’ll use this to blow up the wagon!”

“O-Oh.”

Nodding in apparent consent, the soldier jumped from the seat to the horse, and Kuklo followed him. Riding was difficult with no saddle and two on the mount, and the horse’s all-out gallop threatened to fling them off. Whether it was thanks to his father’s blood─Survey Corps team leader Heath’s─or to his sheer animal sense of balance, Kuklo managed it with ease.

He reached for the short sword the soldier carried on his hip and drew it without permission. Then he immediately attempted to cut the horse free of its harness.

Kuklo had no idea what it was made of, but its weaved bundle of wires was surprisingly resilient. He’d tried to sever it with the short sword, but the blade was badly chipped by the time he was half done. He wondered if it had been dull, but inferior supplies would never be issued to the Survey Corps. He’d seen how sharp their swords were earlier, too, when they tore through the Titan’s skin. The harness must simply have been that durable. As Kuklo fumbled at his task, the Titan slowly but steadily closed the distance.

Kuklo clicked his tongue in frustration, then looked at the wagon.

What do I do?

The image of the short swords within flashed through his mind, but there was the risk of the Titan catching up to them while he moved to and fro. He could shoot the harness with the carbine, but if the bullet ricocheted and hit the horse, that would be the end.

He was out of options.

A little less than a kilometer remained to Wall Maria. If he was lucky, they might make it.

That wasn’t good enough for Kuklo. He had lived his entire life under the thumb of one stranger after another. A plan failing and costing him his life was one thing, but allowing his survival to depend on luck was not his way.

At the same time, Kuklo had no idea how to get out of this nightmare situation alive.

─I think you’ll need it to survive, a familiar girl’s voice whispered to him…or so he imagined.

Tossing away the now-useless short sword, Kuklo drew the knife he carried and applied it to the harness that yoked the horse to the wagon. Made, perhaps, of Iron Bamboo, the knife was exceptionally sharp and cut through with little trouble.

Got it! With that unvoiced cry, Kuklo immediately tossed the grenade into the wagon. In no time the abandoned vehicle was receding behind them.

Perhaps it was too small even to enter the monster’s field of vision, or Titans were only interested in humans. Ogre charged straight ahead, ready to trample the wagon.

Just as its huge foot came down, the wagon exploded with a thunderous roar, and explode it did.

Engulfed in crimson flames that spewed deep black smoke, the Titan looked like a gigantic torch. As the intense heat of the fire scorched it, countless blisters began to appear. Its skin began to fester as though decomposing.

The Titan’s gait, once nimble, was noticeably troubled. Its reddened face wore the same smile as ever, so it was unclear if it was suffering. Either way, being robbed of its physical capabilities forced even a Titan to stop.

Wall Maria’s front gate came into view ahead of them. The sturdy doors opened with a roar, and one member of the Survey Corps after another passed through it without a backward glance. Kuklo was no exception. He could hear the Titan’s footfalls behind him, but he was done. The soldiers on top of the wall were ready to intercept.

“Fire!!”

With that, the cannons spat fire.