Eren listened intently and found that such fantastical stories are to his liking. He would have loved this sort of tale as a kid -- in fact, he was just about certain that it would have been his favorite. After all, for every grand enemy, there was a hero to bring him down. But the more he listened, the more his age, his experience, and his grief grounded his thoughts further into reality.
"Terrifying, truly," he said, nodding in agreement from the bottom of his heart. "It might be presumptuous of me to say this, but I know how you feel. An insurmountable enemy, more like a force of nature than anything else. Their numbers seemed implacable. We spent decades refining techniques to cut them down, entire generations of children-turned-soldiers were lost in doing so. And, tragic as it might sound, wasn't enough."
Mulling it over was just making Eren feel gloomy. Like the two of them were simply brooding over what couldn't be helped -- he would have loved to say "to hell with that, it most certainly can be helped," but with the way things were now, and how they were separated from their homelands by a stretch of time incomprehensible to either of them, there truly was little to be done. The most they could do was share their war stories.
"But I must say, they were never as intelligent as you're making these pests seem. Some were abnormal in their actions -- those were real pains to fight -- but never intelligent. Except for..." He thought of the traitor trio. "A spare few. You said your enemies could only be killed with a special materiel? Well, ours were only brought down by precise technique. Otherwise they'd be picking themselves back up just about immediately no matter how badly you mutilated them."
He tapped the back of his neck with his crutch, then made a slicing motion which ended with a quick, if pained, smile.
"One meter long, ten centimeters wide. Oh, that's about a yard and four inches, respectively. Cut that spot on the back of their gigantic necks and they'd go down. After all," he hid his face behind a hand. "That's where the human was."
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"Terrifying, truly," he said, nodding in agreement from the bottom of his heart. "It might be presumptuous of me to say this, but I know how you feel. An insurmountable enemy, more like a force of nature than anything else. Their numbers seemed implacable. We spent decades refining techniques to cut them down, entire generations of children-turned-soldiers were lost in doing so. And, tragic as it might sound, wasn't enough."
Mulling it over was just making Eren feel gloomy. Like the two of them were simply brooding over what couldn't be helped -- he would have loved to say "to hell with that, it most certainly can be helped," but with the way things were now, and how they were separated from their homelands by a stretch of time incomprehensible to either of them, there truly was little to be done. The most they could do was share their war stories.
"But I must say, they were never as intelligent as you're making these pests seem. Some were abnormal in their actions -- those were real pains to fight -- but never intelligent. Except for..." He thought of the traitor trio. "A spare few. You said your enemies could only be killed with a special materiel? Well, ours were only brought down by precise technique. Otherwise they'd be picking themselves back up just about immediately no matter how badly you mutilated them."
He tapped the back of his neck with his crutch, then made a slicing motion which ended with a quick, if pained, smile.
"One meter long, ten centimeters wide. Oh, that's about a yard and four inches, respectively. Cut that spot on the back of their gigantic necks and they'd go down. After all," he hid his face behind a hand. "That's where the human was."