Attack on Titan Alternative:Shingeki Adventurers

Ymir sighed before quietly entering the building. She had to be as sneaky as possible unless she wanted to become a human popsicle.

Each step she took, would echo throughout the floor that she was in. Ice shards were protruding from both the ceiling and the walls. She could see her breath with each exhale.

She carefully took each step but she realised that the floor wasn't slippery, giving her the opportunity to go down the staircase faster but sometimes she had to jump over the railing because of the shards.

She opened the first door she saw and it was completely empty.

"This is going to take forever," Ymir said angrily, slamming the door.

She sniffed but with the extremely cold air, she couldn't find any scents.

'Fuck. The cold air is fucking ruining my sense of smell. Finding her is going to be even more of an issue.'

Ymir looked through the glass window to see nothing there. She opened the door to go down another floor. On the second highest floor, she noticed that all the doors were open and the rooms were covered in ice.

'I'm guessing she's not here.'

Ymir went to the floor below and it was the same result. Doors open. Rooms frozen.

"Okay, I think that every floor that's covered in ice has already been looked through so I should just keep going down until there's no ice," Ymir decided.

Ymir opened the doors to the staircase. She looked over the railing to see how far it went down until the ice stopped.

"Hmm..seems that he's searched through 25 floors. Here goes nothing," Ymir said.

She looked down at her ankle to see that the swelling went down but it still hurts every time she moves. Ymir climbed on top of the railing before jumping down.

The cold air was hitting her face as she was falling faster and faster. When she noticed the ice wasn't spread on the stairs or the walls, she tried to grab the handrail but she lost grip. But luckily, she grabbed the side of the landing of the staircase. She was about to lift herself until she felt cold air.

'Shit!'

Ymir heard footsteps coming her direction so she kept hanging until she heard a loud creak. She then heard footsteps going down so she lifted herself before she got caught.

'Let's follow this prick,' Ymir thought, taking a careful glance at the ice user.

She quietly followed him, carefully taking each step.

"Where is she?" The ice metahuman stretched his arms and yawned. "I'm so tired."

'I hear ya, man. I'm tired too,' Ymir covered her mouth to yawn as well.

'I wonder if they have to do this part of the test too.'

The ice teen opened the door to another floor and entered inside with Ymir following suit only a few seconds after. The floor was similar to a typical office with grey cubicles spread throughout.

Her scent got a bit stronger since the air on this floor wasn't cold enough. A scent of blood invaded her nostrils, causing Ymir to be alert.

'She's here! I have to find out before he does!'

She went left and decided to follow the trail. She would briefly look above the cubicles to compare the distance between her and him. The scent got stronger, signalling that she was getting closer to Pieck.

But then another blood trail ruffled her nose. Ymir grew confused at this new scent.

'Does he know I'm here?' Ymir thought.

She decided to follow the first blood trail that went through her nostrils.

"Pst!Ymir!" she heard a familiar voice.

When she turned her head, she saw an injured Pieck, hiding in a cubicle at the end of the row.

Ymir extended her hand out, gesturing for Pieck to hold on and wait for her. She slowly walked to the injured girl but she heard footsteps so she hid in the nearest cubicle. The footsteps were getting louder.

And then she heard an irritating groan.

"Doing this way will take too long, "The ice teen said. "I have a better idea."

Ymir got up and sprinted to Pieck but a massive wave of ice spread throughout the floor, pushing her and Pieck out of the building.

"Oh fuck!" Ymir said before she managed to reach Pieck she grabbed her and tucked her into her making Ymir take the fall damage. The two teens smashed into the asphalt leaving a small crater below them. Pieck rolled off from the taller teen and limped to the artefact but as she reached for it, an ice shard pierced through her hand.

"Oh, so you were on the same floor?"

Ymir tried to stand up but another ice shard came and went through her left thigh, falling back down.

"Stop," the ice teen walked towards the crater. "I want to get this over with and you two are just delaying it."

Despite the shard in her leg, she slowly tried to get up. Her legs were shaking with the blood running down her left leg. The blood ran down her head, dripping down on her forearm and hand.

"Go fuck yourself…prick…I'm not giving up…not when we're so fucking close…your friends are down…the only one standing in our way is you…and if you think I'm going to give up now…well you're dead wrong!"

The ice teen looked down and stared at her with a blank stare. She felt her throat tighten and her teeth were lightly chattering beneath her lips.

"I don't care."

Ymir gritted her teeth.

"I get it. It's better if I just let you go, get the test over with and then walk to my room and sleep in my comfy bed…" he drawled a bit, looking to be in deep thought. "Actually, you could go."

"What?"

"If I'm right, it doesn't matter which team wins. After all, we're being graded individually and judging from my performance, I think I did enough."

The ice teen turned and walked away. Ymir weakly fell back down as her heart slowed its pace but she was so confused why she felt like that. Felt so…scared.The last time she felt like that...he was still alive.

"Are you okay?" Pieck limped to Ymir. 

"I should be saying that to you. I have the healing factor. How did you survive in that concrete icicle?"

"I had to regulate my body temperature to delay my forced hibernation, but I still need to practise it," Pieck explained. "But about what he said, is that true? Is it actually graded on the individual performance?"

"I don't know. But even if it isn't true, do you think the association will fail him?" Ymir asked.

"How's your hand?"

"Pretty bad. I can look through it," Pieck showed her hand. It had a big hole in the middle of her palm with visible bone shards poking out.

Ymir yanked the shard from her leg with blood from both sides of her leg. She briefly screamed before she smashed the ice shard against the asphalt.

"Were you really going to fight back?" Pieck said, putting one of Ymir's slender arms over her neck to help Ymir stand up. Pieck gave Ymir the bloody artefact.

"Well, what choice did I have? Not the first time I fought my way out of a corner," Ymir said.

"We would've died right there, would we?"

Ymir sighed. "Yup. Our lives were in his hands and he spared us. I would say lucky us but he just humiliated me and then left."

"He toyed with all of us. If Bert couldn't beat him, what chance would we have?."

'The only damage that we did was throwing him into trees. He never needed a team to mop the floor with us.'

Ymir gritted her teeth again. She had to get stronger. She knew that the ice teen isn't the strongest in the association and if there's plenty more like him, then she'll be dead within her first year.

The two teens were limping down the street until they heard a crying shriek and the ice monster slid against the asphalt with a massive chunk of a building crushing its chest. It slowly began to fade away and turn into snow and fade away in the breeze.

Bertholdt flew to the spot and took a deep breath. He noticed the two injured girls and landed softly on the ground.

"It seems that you guys made it out," Bertholdt said, 

"Haha. So funny, had fun with it?" Ymir quickly tilted her head to the crater where the ice beast used to be.

"No, it was more durable than I thought, "Bertholdt crossed his arms. "Where's he now?"

"He left."

Bertholdt looked surprised and confused at the same time. "What? What do you mean he left?"

"He just left. He realised that the Association is grading us on our individual performances, so to get the match over faster, he let us go," Pieck told the tall teen.

"Why would he do that? You guys are barely standing and he could've just taken the artefact and waited for me."

"Don't care. Let's go before he changes his mind," Ymir said.

"Ymir, do you still know where the spot is?" Bert asked.

"Yeah, but I can barely move, so running is out of the option," Ymir said, looking at her injured leg.

"I'll just fly you guys there, just remind me where it is,"

"It should be about three miles southwest from here," Ymir weakly lifted her finger and pointed out where to go.

Bert nodded and surrounded them each in a ball of air before he bent his knees and leaped forward before he made a small tornado below him and headed to the dropoff spot.

Ymir looked at the blue sky as damaged buildings and skyscrapers passed her by. She placed her dirty, bloody hands on her face and gritted her teeth.

'That piece of shit. I couldn't do anything. He was perfectly fine while I could barely stand. Even though we had the numbers advantage, he still beat us.'

"Fuck…"

Ymir slowly drifted off into sleep as Bertholdt cautiously flew to the dropoff spot.

When she opened her eyes, she was sitting in a small dining room.

Simple wooden table, simple wooden chair. The tablecloth was plain white with a couple of messy stick-figure drawings.

She slowly looked up to see a middle-aged man with black hair, greying at the temples. His hairline was receding wearing a simple white dress shirt, green cotton vest and black pants.

He looked very familiar like she knew him.

She felt a tap on her shoulder, turning to see a younger Pieck showing her a messy drawing of one big stick figure and two small figures each with a big smile on their face. 

The two small figures were holding hands with one of them having dots all over its face.

She looked at the girl with a little bit of disappointment before touching her face.

Ymir slowly got up, seeing a woman drooling a waterfall of spit into a bowl. She jerked her foot away from the nurse.

"What the fuck are you doing?!"

"I was going to heal you," The nurse wiped her mouth before she took a small metal bottle out of her white lab coat and carefully poured a few yellow drops into the bowl, making the clear slimy liquid turn a custard yellow as she stirred the contents together with a thin metal spoon.

"Healing me?"

The nurse nodded. "My ability is to produce saliva with healing properties. My name is Alice Dunn." She tapped her ID badge on her breast pocket. Her dark teal hair was slightly wavy with a mole near the right side of her nose with her fair skin and sky blue eyes. She was wearing a navy blue dress shirt and skirt with a black belt around her waist and black tights underneath her skirt. Ymir noticed the shape of her breasts through her shirt.

'Hello nurse…'

"And I'm a B-rank Medical Adventurer. Can I ask for your name?"

"Huh?" Ymir averted from the nurse's chest and cleared her throat. "Ymir.My name's Ymir."

"Nice to meet you, Ymir," Alice said with a smile. "I saw your test. You did really well despite your circumstances. That ice guy was very impressive."

"Don't remind me…"

"So…mind lending me your ankle? It looks pretty swollen."

Ymir slowly extended her leg out, much to her dismay. The nurse took out a pack of latex gloves, tore it open and put her hands in them before she dug her right index and middle finger into the bowl. She lifted a sample of the slimy yellow substance with her fingers and slowly spread a bit all over her ankle.

"So cold!" Ymir commented, almost shivering at the sudden coldness. "What is this stuff?"

"It's my saliva combined with a little mixture that I made, "Alice spread the mixture all over her right ankle. "Don't worry, your ankle should be fine within a half-hour."

"How long have you been doing this?"

Alice briefly looked at the ceiling. "Hmm, about 7 years."

"You must be strong," Ymir assumed.

Alice chuckled. "Yeah, I guess so. My sister is stronger though. We always compete with each other, hunting monsters and people…" She muttered the last word.

"People?"

"You heard me?"

Ymir tugged her left earlobe. " I have very good hearing. So what do you mean by 'people'? "

"Well, Adventurers can do a multitude of things. Most of us are Variety Adventurers but we tend to lean towards one or two aspects. For example, my sister and I are not only Medical Adventurers but we're also Blacklist Adventurers. We capture or kill those who are very dangerous criminals. There are also other types like Ruin Adventurers and Marine Adventurers but we don't do that."

Alice shifted the stool closer to her. She lightly dipped the spoon back into the bowl and reached for Ymir's shirt before stopping midway.

"Is it okay if I lift your shirt?"

Ymir sighed before she lifted her shirt herself. Alice looked around her midsection before slightly leaning forward and spreading a bit of her mixture on her torso using her glove. She shivered at the slimy, cold texture of the mixture on her skin.

" You have a bit of bruising on your sides and stomach," Alice said. "But out of your team, you're on the lesser side of severity compared to the others. One of them had a hole through her hand and the other had a fractured forearm."

"How are they?" Ymir asked. 

"The girl is okay. Besides her hand, she had a bit of bruising and some mild hypothermia. For the boy…he also had a fractured skull."

"Shit, it's that bad, huh?" Ymir commented.

"Yeah, I had to remove a couple of bone shards from damaging his brain. He's still unconscious as of now."

Alice explained, rubbing the mixture on her bruises.

"But that's why I'm here!" Alice grew a confident smile. "To make sure that injuries don't hinder your progress!"

"Heh," Ymir said with a small smile. "Like your confidence."

"Well when you've been an Adventurer like this for over 10 years, your confidence tends to grow." Alice leaned back in her seat. "You can put down your shirt."

Ymir pulled her shirt down. "Did you have to do something similar like this when you were an examinee?"

Alice nodded. "Yeah, my sister and I had to do it. It was hard but we got through it. It's easier to have a friend or some family with you."

Ymir hummed in agreement. "Where's your sister now?"

"Doing the same thing except at Paradis," Alice said. "We're twins, actually so we have the same ability."

Ymir looked at her ankle to see that her ankle looked normal except it was a bit red.

"Hmm, seems to be working better than usual." Alice looked at Ymir's ankle.

"Well, adding my healing factor with the mixture, probably amplified my regeneration," Ymir guessed while moving her leg to get a better look at her ankle.

"You have a healing factor?! Lucky."

"Lucky? You could heal too."

"But that's all my ability could do," Alice stood up. "Anyways, I should check up on the other patients, and see if there's an update on their condition. See you soon!"

Ymir lazily lifted her hand goodbye before she leaned in her bed.

'I hope they're okay. I'm not as religious as I used to be but if you're listening to me, give them a path to success and a healthy recovery.'

With that short prayer, Ymir closed her eyes and fell asleep a couple of minutes later.