Mikasa Ackerman believes in a (mercilessworld) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-09-08 22:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | mikasa ackerman, sam winchester |
Who: Mikasa and Sam Winchester
Where: Outside of Sam's cabin
When: Backdated just a bit to the beginning of September
What: Mikasa's trying to prepare herself for whatever might come through the Tesseract and Sam's curious about how they fight the Titans in her world
Warnings: Mentions of death and war...
When Sam had expressed interest in her world, Mikasa felt both relief yet, at the same time, uncertainty. Her world was a cruel one, though from what he had said, so was his. She didn’t know everything about his world except for what he had shared with her and the brief information that she had read online. The whole concept of sharing information like this was strange to her, as such technology did not exist at all for her. It had been frightening at first, but in comparison to Titans attacking, she supposed she could handle it. Still, she wished Armin were here, so he could buffer the information for her. Granted, Mikasa was, by no means, stupid. Armin was just a genius, certifiably so, and usually understood things far quicker than she did. He could also help her buffer Eren from the world.
Eren. She knew she shouldn’t think about him, not now. She was riding in Sam’s car, in the passenger seat, feeling a bit off. Cars did not exist for her. She was used to carriages and horses and was pretty skilled at riding a horse. She had to be, after all. It was the only way that one could survive outside the walls. Horses were much faster than Titans could run, but she wondered how a Titan would survive against a car like this one. Would it be beneficial? What happened to this technology? From her understanding, she was now in the past some how. Did it disappear before the Titans, or because of the Titans?
Either way. Eren wouldn’t like any of this. She knew exactly how he would react to this world. Her head looked up briefly as they approached their destination, and Mikasa readjusted her gear, then stepped out of the car. She was dressed in her uniform, figuring it made sense to doing this practice. Her uniform was still her favored outfit, though she did shift into some common clothes around here every now and then. Her uniform consisted of a tan jacket that cut off near her waist with long sleeves. It had the wings of freedom insignia on the back. Her green cloak trailed around her neck with the same symbol. Her white pants and shirt matched the outfit, and around her neck was the red scarf that Eren had given her that fateful day. The 3D Maneuver Gear sat easily beside her, with the double edged blades sticking out of the edges of the gear. She waited for Sam to take the lead, as was only proper since this was his place.
--
The cabin didn’t look like much, from the outside. It was set way back in the New York countryside, not even visible from the end of the long driveway because of the trees. It had been a total dump when they’d found it, which had been what they’d been looking for, because dumps came cheap, and they hadn’t had much in the way of money. The fixing up had been a project of a few months, but even now, it wasn’t anything spectacular. Most of their efforts had gone into fortifying-- both in terms of literal strength of the foundations and walls and in terms of building in defenses against the supernatural-- rather than renovating or remodeling. Aside from the floodlights fixed in strategic places to give full visibility of the grounds around the cabin from the inside, none of the security measures were evident from the outside.
But they weren’t here for the cabin today. Mikasa had suggested that they go somewhere secluded and unlikely to be observed for their practice with her fighting tech, and Sam hadn’t been able to think of a better place. The cabin’s location was no longer entirely secure (or rather, had never been as secure as he’d thought) thanks to those damn trackers that SHIELD had installed in them, but he was still fond of the place. He had considered selling it and finding a new place somewhere else, but there was the possibility that he might need it soon to deal with Dean. He didn’t really have the time to set up a new place, and there weren’t many places that came readily equipped for having a demon tied up in the basement.
Of course, there was the fact that the more people he brought out here, the less secure the location was, but it had originally been intended as a safehouse for his friends, and Mikasa was close enough. Still, they barely knew each other, and he was aware that it was a little bit creepy to get into a car with a near-stranger and drive to the place where they chained up monsters. He’d tried to make her feel more comfortable by keeping up a light conversation during the drive, but after he parked, he took the chance to look over at her, more intently than he’d been able to manage while he needed to keep his eyes on the road. “This is the place,” he said, giving her a small but warm smile. “You alright?”
--
It wasn’t so much about where they were traveling but how they traveled to get here that had unsettled Mikasa. Cars were vehicles that did not exist for her. More than a few times on the trip here, she had gripped the handles with white-knuckles, holding on for dear life. She was grateful when the car stopped, but only because she didn’t understand it. Armin would love this, she knew. Eren would be too much of a handful in this world. He would get into trouble far too easily.
She stepped out from the car, one hand shielding her gaze from the sun as she surveyed the place. She didn’t think anything bad about the cabin itself. After all, her world wasn’t full of riches, either. What stood out to her was its location. Secluded even in the city, far enough back from the road, surrounded by tall trees. It would be very easy to...Mikasa paused, turning her gaze back to Sam curiously. What she knew about his demons came springing to mind, but she didn’t know the purpose of this cabin, nor was she about to be that blunt right away. “I’m all right, thank you. We...don’t have cars, in my world,” commented Mikasa quietly. Her voice was soft, and she dropped her hand from her eyes as they adjusted to the sun in front of her.
“This is a perfect location, Sam,” she acknowledged, taking note of the trees surrounding them and the seclusion. “Thank you for bringing me here.” She motioned for him to lead the way, letting him take charge since it was his cabin.
--
“Oh,” Sam said, surprised. The car wasn’t the Impala; Dean had taken that with him when he’d left the apartment. For his own purposes, he’d chosen to rent one on the occasions that he went up to the cabin or out of town for other purposes rather than try to negotiate some kind of partial custody (or, as he might have done in his own world, simply stolen one off the street). It was a simple, small car, the cheapest to rent, and he hadn’t thought that it would be unsettling to Mikasa. “I had the impression that your world had technologies like… this.”
But she hadn’t been carsick, and she professed to be alright, so he took her at her word. “I thought this would probably work. We bought this place as a safehouse, a bunker… a place to get away from anything that might threaten the tower or the city.” Of course, he didn’t live in the tower anymore, and that wasn’t quite what it had ended up being used for. But the sentiment still stood, as far as he was concerned. This was meant to be a safe place, even if that included being a place to contain threats like rogue vampires or demons.
Leading the way along the path that went towards and then curved around the cabin, he explained, “There’s more space out back. You can see the inside too, if you want.” There wasn’t much to see in there; most of the wards had been put inside the walls or under the carpets, out of sight. The set up in the basement that had held Angel had been mostly dismantled and put away when they’d let him go. Sam still came up here every so often to make sure everything was in place and that the emergency stores, both for humans and for use against non-humans, were still ready and stocked. It made him feel better to know that it was here, whether he needed to use it or not.
--
While Mikasa hadn’t brought with her an extra pair of boots, she knew that Sam could still wear the belt that held on the 3D Maneuver Gear. They kind of fit everyone in a convenient sort of way. She glanced around them a moment, then nodded. The trees were tall enough and close enough together that this could work well. It still wasn’t like flying through a city, but it would do well to serve as Sam’s first place to practice with this gear. At his question about cars, Mikasa shook her head once. “None of this exists in my world. I think…” Mikasa frowned briefly, “I think we’re from the future, but very far in the future. Or a different universe somehow, though I don’t know how that’s possible. We reference sometimes things that exist in the past of this world. We also have old weapons that this world has in its near past, like some guns.”
She paused a bit when he did bring up that it was a safe house. “I’m impressed that you thought far enough ahead to come up with a second plan in case of danger.” She still wondered, though, about the time difference.
It was difficult to place and she knew she wasn’t the one to figure that out. If Squad Leader Hange or Armin were here, either of them probably could, but Mikasa didn’t know enough about their past to put two and two together like that. She knew that Eren would be hopeless about that idea. “We use horses mostly, as they are faster than Titans and our horses are well trained. We also have wagons and carriages, too, since they are the easiest to use with horses. And I don’t have to see inside, that’s fine.” She shrugged once, then started to undo her gear. First, the leather piece around her waist started to come off without a second thought. She had white leggings on underneath it. A strip of leather that resembled a pair of shorts when straightened out completely rested in her hands when she finally took it off. Straps, like suspenders, hung from the edge of it, and on each side there was a place to connect the holders for the gas and the actual gear itself.
Mikasa offered the gear to Sam, holding out the leather simply. “First step is to put this on. It will fit, don’t worry about that. You step into it like a pair of pants and the strips of leather connecting to it will fit around you naturally. They are in place to hold it up and to connect the gas and your swords to your body.” She didn’t really know how else to explain it, but she could demonstrate this process to Sam if it was needed. “The first real step is knowing how to balance in it, but we don’t really have the machine that we use to practice balance. You’ll want to distribute your weight equally so imagine that if you are in the air, you can stand up straight regardless of being on the ground or not. Does that make sense?”
--
"Definitely a different universe," Sam said. "There are multiple. More than we could even begin to count. Maybe all pressed on top of each other, maybe side by side, I don't know exactly how it works. I just know it does." It hadn't taken him too long to come to grips with that, but he could understand how it would be hard for someone else. He couldn't remember exactly what had solidified it for him; once he'd accepted that it wasn't Lucifer's doing, it had simply been so different that an alternate universe was the only possible explanation. And then Cas had said there was no heaven, and that had been the final nail in the coffin. "Coming here, we all traveled in both time and space."
He walked around to the back of the cabin, to the small clearing out back. It was a fairly large building, so it took a few moments, even though he took long strides. He didn't move too fast, not wanting to leave her behind. When they got to the back, he looked up at the cabin. "We had one at home, a bunker. Safest place in the whole world… until we moved in, at least." He added this last part wryly. "This isn't anywhere near the same, but it's something."
It still felt better, safer, having this place. Even now that he was out of the tower. He didn't have any angelic backup anymore, and his brother was as much a danger as he was a source of comfort.
But anyway. He turned his mind back to the situation at hand, and the equipment that she was showing him. It was… strange technology, made of leather, powered by gas. It actually made sense, based on what she had described about their world being somewhat behind the times in terms of technology, despite being in a future time. Fascinating in theory, in practice, he was pretty sure he was going to look ridiculous in this getup. Dean would have gotten a laugh out of it if he was here, that was certain.
Thankfully, he wasn't here, and it wasn't too hard for Sam to compartmentalize his vanity in the interest of pursuing his curiosity instead. He did as she'd instructed, stepping into the gear a little gingerly, but as promised, it fit. The harder part was trying to figure out how to stand in the way she'd described, but he straightened his spine and adjusted his weight as evenly as he could between his heels and the balls of his feet. He kept his knees just a little bit bent, and put his arms out at a slight angle from his body, hoping they'd help him keep his balance. "Like this?"
He was tempted to ask what happened if he lost his balance, but he had a feeling he already knew the answer to that. He'd either fall very ungracefully to the ground, or end up veering off at an angle and possibly crashing into the side of the cabin. Neither option was particularly appealing.
--
The idea of another world was both terrifying and a relief to Mikasa. It meant that not every world suffered at the hands of the monsters that they knew. Not every world feared for their lives every single waking moment of every single day. But, it was also terrifying. It meant that the Titans could, possibly, exist in other worlds or show up elsewhere, threatening people who had no clue how to fight against them. She wasn’t a fool. They knew how to fight the Titans because of the sacrifices that had been surrendered before them. Those sacrifices had gone into creating this gear she was now showing Sam, and somehow, she didn’t think that this significance was lost on him.
“I can only hope that having other worlds means that at least one of them is better than both of ours,” Mikasa stated quietly. She thought that he would understand.
It was why, out of everyone here, she’d chosen to show this to Sam first. The bunker was a great idea, similar to their own safehouses. She nodded her approval, then paid attention as Sam stepped into the gear. It was a bit different without the device to raise them into the air, but this would do, for now, at least. “Yes, that’s close,” she admitted, the surprise there in her voice and she couldn’t really hide the fact that she was impressed. He had never seen the gear before, except for what she had, so his ability was instinctive.
“The next step is the important part,” she explained quietly. “There are wires connected to the gas tanks. A push of the button will send the wire launching out to the nearest surface. It’s up to you how you manipulate that wire. You can control how much gas you use by turning the nozzle. We...had to be careful. You wouldn’t want to run out of gas in the middle of a battle, especially if reinforcements couldn’t reach you on time. Being grounded during a fight against the Titans almost certainly means death.” She looked down a moment, remembering Marco, who had died without anyone knowing how he had died.
“The blades on your sides slide out of each container. We keep at least ten on hand no matter what. Slicing the Titans at the nape of the neck in a timed strike is the best way to bring one down in a second. We’ve found no other weak point,” admitted Mikasa quietly, her tone darkened at that statement. “We have hope, though, with my brother, Eren. We just learned he has the ability to shift into a Titan. Hopefully, we can use him to understand more, and we both want to learn more.” She motioned forward at the trees ahead of them.
“You can use the trees to move forward, but be careful to keep your balance the entire time. I can demonstrate first if you’d like.”
--
Sam did understand that sentiment. He looked at her solemnly, and nodded. "Me too."
He figured his world was different from hers, in that the fight to save it wasn't so well known-- outside of the hunting community, no one really knew how many times it had come close to ending, how many threats were posed upon it-- but he was a part of that community. He knew what it was like to live in fear, surrounded by things that could kill him without blinking an eye. They weren't Titans, but he was fine with the fact that he'd never met one of those so far. And he was willing to prepare for the eventuality that he might whether he wanted to or not.
He looked down at himself, trying to figure out the wires and the buttons as she explained them. It made sense, mostly, though grasping the concept and putting it into action were different things entirely. He couldn't visualize what it would actually do, how it would actually work once he was in the air. He'd used a lot of strange weapons and tools in his time as a hunter, and could pick up on a lot of skills quickly because his life had literally depended on it, but this was really new and strange, even for him.
"Seeing a demonstration would be a good idea," he said. "If you don't mind. I think I understand how each part works, but I'm sure there's more to it than that." He gave her a slight smile. "It's like-- you can understand how a car works, but not have the skill to drive it." Although she might not really understand how a car worked, he realized, because he hadn't really explained anything about it, and it was probable that no one else had, either. It wasn't a perfect analogy for her to understand, then. But he wouldn't trust himself behind the wheel of a car if he'd never seen anyone drive one, and this seemed almost equally dangerous to his safety, just in a different way.
Relaxing his stance, he started to take the gear off again so that he could hand it back to her. He was curious to see how it worked.
She was relieved that he understood where she was coming from. While this might seem like just an ordinary lesson, Sam seemed to instinctively realize that each thing she was showing him was put there for a reason. At least with this, he could practice in case a Titan did come through. She couldn’t really practice fighting any of his monsters, unless there came a time when something showed up here and someone was needed to step in to help out. Not only was it part of her training as a soldier to put herself on the line, she felt that she owed that much to Sam. He’d reached out to her, as well, so if the opportunity arose for her to help out those from his world, she would do so without thinking about it. But she could study. She could prepare, so that if his demons ever did show up, she would know how to fight them.
With Sam’s analogy about the car, Mikasa admittedly didn’t understand it fully, but she understood his meaning. She wasn’t going to try to drive a car just because she had ridden in one once. She shouldn’t expect him to know how to use the 3D Maneuver Gear just because she had shown him how to use it once. She took the gear from him once he’d taken it off, stepping into it naturally. She’d done this a thousand times for more than three years, after all. She was used to even wearing the gear all the time, no matter what the situation.
“All right, then. I can do that.” She released the gas tanks briefly, then nodded to Sam. “I may move quickly, but I’ll try to slow it down so you can see how it works.” With a push of a button on the device, she launched a wire into the air and it attached to the closest tree to her. She used the gear to pull herself towards the tree, essentially flying through the air in a vertical motion forwards. Fluidly, Mikasa launched the next wire, attaching to the next tree, until she was practically swinging from tree to tree using the wires to propel herself forward. She wanted to demonstrate an attack, too, so as she moved, Mikasa looked for a smaller tree that she could slice with her swords. When she spotted one not too far from the cabin itself, Mikasa launched herself at the small tree.
In mid-air, she drew both of her swords and sliced clean through the top of the tree. She spun in the air from the force of the wires and her movements, using her natural body motion to propel herself onto the top of the cabin. A well-practiced jump sent her back down onto the ground, standing firmly yet elegantly in front of Sam once more. She held out one of the blades to Sam so he could examine it. The edges were sharp and the blade was edged to slice through thick skin. “In essence, that’s how the device works. We can use it to launch ourselves at a moving target, even from horseback. The best of us can return back to our horses without having them slow down.” She could, as she’d finished top in her graduating class, but Mikasa wasn’t one to brag about herself. “Be careful not to let off too much gas at once, or you will speed faster than you’d like to and it’s more difficult to react.”
“Here is a good place to try this if you would like to try. Just keep your balance and you’ll be fine. Eren once used a piece of faulty equipment during training and wound up slamming his head against the ground when he wasn’t able to keep balanced.” She smiled softly, remembering how much Eren had struggled and how determined he was to get everything right.
--
Once he saw it in action, it was impossible not to admire the cleverness of the contraption. Giving a regular old human the power of flight and maneuverability in the air-- it was nothing like what he'd pictured, and that was probably because his imagination was stuck in the age of technology made by superheroes. His original mental image of 3D maneuver gear had been more along the lines of a sort of hovercraft to be stood upon.
This was entirely different. So much simpler, an entirely different way of envisioning the possibility of getting a human being up in the air. The only word to describe what he felt was impressed.
"That," he said, "Is really clever. And I'm probably going to do an awful job at it," he added, smiling, barely keeping down the urge to laugh. He took the blade from her, and all he did was examine it, briefly touching his fingertips to the flat of the weapon. Nevertheless, something subtle about the way he held it spoke to a practiced ease, years of experience with all different types of blade, to the point where he could pick up a new weapon, new blade, and use it competently without having to be trained. Then, carefully holding it by the blade so that his skin wouldn't touch the edges, he offered it back to her handle-first.
"But I'd like to try it," he added, to clarify. It was something he'd never tried before. It was clever. "What happens if there are no trees or walls around? What if you have to fight a Titan in a meadow full of grass? Do you attach the wire to the Titan itself?"
If Mikasa knew what awaited her in her future, she’d have a better answer to Sam’s next questions. But, she was from a point where certain events didn’t happen yet, thankfully. She’d probably have fought harder to get back if she knew. She took the blade back from Sam, then slid it gently into her gear. Her gaze shifted again to the woods around them, grateful that they were here. Once the blade was safely back in its place, Mikasa shrugged out of her gear, then handed it over to Sam.
“Yes, you could use the wire to attach directly to the Titan,” she admitted softly. “We haven’t had to do that, much, luckily. Our commanders plan the attacks very well and we know how to herd them. Besides,” Mikasa paused, her tone darkening now, “We have now found out exactly why our world is designed as it is.” She paused, then bent down and in the dirt around them, started to draw three circles. These circles went around each other, with the smallest one in the middle. On each circle, she drew several small bubbles coming off them. She pointed to one of those pockets off the largest, outermost circle.
“This was my home town,” Mikasa explained quietly. “We built three walls to keep the Titans out. Wall Maria, Wall Rose and Wall Sina. Along each of the Walls, there are pocket towns, towns meant to draw the Titans specifically to them so they wouldn’t breach the main wall directly. My town, Shiganshina, was one of those pocket towns. We were among the first attacked five years ago when the Colossus Titan invaded.” She rose to her feet, a look of anger falling over her features. Her brows furrowed and her eyes narrowed as she stared at the design. “We were fodder, basically, cattle and food for the Titans.”
Still, she didn’t mean to bring the conversation around this way. It was...just a useful bit of information that helped explain more about how they knew how to fight the Titans. “Five years ago was the first time the Titans attacked in over a hundred years.” She fell silent, letting those words sink in. She knew there was more happening that she didn’t know about, but Mikasa wasn’t one to go digging for that information. Eren and Armin did that all on their own, just by being themselves. “At least now, we can use this to our advantage. I think you could fight well, if they ever came here.”
--
"That's horrible," Sam said, his voice quiet with a kind of horrified disbelief. He stared at what she'd drawn in the ground. He wished he could say he didn't understand the reasons why someone would design a land like that, but he couldn't. He had seen too much of the lengths that humans could go to, things they would do even to their fellow humans. Dean had done it, in Cas's timeline, used Cas and the others as fodder for the demons so that he could get to the devil.
Of course, he'd also seen plenty of inhuman things that would use others as fodder, and he vaguely wondered whether it was possible that something else had taken power in Mikasa's world. But the simplest explanation was that the people sitting comfortably behind those walls, the 'important' people, maybe the rulers or legislators-- were willing to throw others to the Titans in order to feel that their lives were safe.
He didn't know what else to say. They had were capable of fighting back, at least-- they hadn't been entirely defenseless. They'd been clever. They'd come up with ways to take down the Titans and defend their city, though Sam didn't have to ask to know that an invasion would have done a lot of damage even if they'd defeated the Titans.
When she continued, he offered her a small smile. "If they came here, I'd do my best," he said. Holding out his hand, he added, "And since I can, I'll practice first."