(AU) Attack on Dragons: On Flaming Wings Ch. 1

“DO I EVEN HAVE TO GUESS YOUR NAME, HICCUP?” Our superior, Keith Shadis, yells at a smaller kid.
 
“A-Armin Arlert, sir! From Shinganshina!” the blonde boy says.
 
“Your parents held high hopes for you, didn’t they? Going against tradition? WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR, ARLERT?!”
 
“Well, it was actually my Grandfather, sir! And I’m here to help the Vikings against the dragons!”
 
“Isn’t that just great! I’m sure they’ll make quick work of you with their fire!”
 
He was just throwing out insults left and right, trying to break the trainees. We were going to be fighting and training dragons, after all. A weak Viking is hardly a Viking at all.
 
Me? I’m not at all weak. In fact, I can even say I’m probably the strongest in this training camp. I came here to learn the ways of the dragon riders so that I would go to the island farthest away from the wilderness and clans that were constantly picking fights. After hearing about how a fucking Bewilderbeast attacked the Isle of Shinganshina and killed countless Vikings, I’d rather stay as far away as possible from the now destroyed island. Having a strong-ass dragon by my side will make me feel even better.
 
“HOW ABOUT YOU? WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!”
 
“Thomas Wagner, from the Isle of Trost!”
 
At least I know I’m not the only one from my island to take a ship out here. I wonder if he’s here for the same reason I am.
 
“AND YOU?”
 
The instructor’s dragon, that, by the way, had FOUR heads, trailed behind him and eerily loomed around his shoulder.
 
“Sir! Mina Carolina from the Isle of Karanese, sir!”
 
“ARE YOU THE BEST VIKING ON KARANESE?!”
 
“I might just be, sir!”
 
Maybe he’ll skip over me, I look just as tough as those other trainees.
 
“FOURTH ROW, ABOUT FACE!”
 
He’s walking down my row. Stay cool, Jean. I think I’ve figured out how he’s picking out the Vikings to harass; the ones that shudder when the venus fly trap of dragons behind him glares at them with its four pairs of eyes get the verbal beating-
 
“WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING SO SMUG ABOUT?! WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!”
 
Shit. Did I really look afraid? Oh well. My time to shine.
 
“Jean Kirschtein from the Isle of Trost, sir!”
 
“And you’re here for what reason?”
 
“I’m going to join the Center Watch, away from the dangers of wild dragons!”
 
Nailed it.
 
“So you want to live within the perimeter of the Sina islands, huh?”
 
“That’s the plan, yeah. Wouldn’t want to get maimed by a-”
 
Suddenly there was a splitting pain in my forehead, I kneeled to the ground clutching my bruise. He headbutted me! What the fuck?! I was just giving my exact answer! Screw verbal beating, I just received that shit physically.
 
“YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TIME TO SIT DOWN WHEN SOMEONE HITS YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH A SHIELD OR HAMMER?!”
 
Shadis’ four-headed dragon that was elegantly strutting behind him let out a laugh-like noise. This will most likely be a regular thing here on this island. Shadis looked even more pissed off for some reason I can’t even come up with (maybe because the skull-cracking headache he just gave me) and moved on to yelling at the freckled guy standing next to me. Thank the Gods that part was over for me, at least.
 
“WIPE THAT SMILE OFF OF YOUR FACE!”
 
“Marco Bodt, sir! From Jinae, in the southern Rose islands, sir!”
 
“WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN THREE YEARS?!”
 
“I want to join the Center Watch and serve to protect the Chief, sir!”
 
I highly doubt that. No one just wants to go and protect the Chief for the sake of protecting the Chief.
 
“YOU’LL BE SURE TO DISTRACT THE DRAGONS FROM THE CHIEF WITH THAT HAPPY-GO-LUCKY SMILE OF YOURS!”
 
Shadis and his dragon harassed the hell out of some more trainees. He even made a girl run until the sun went down for smuggling a mutton into the ranks and took away her eating rights for the next few days. After we broke ranks, some guys with their fancy dragons brought us to the living quarters; house after house lined up along the cliffside.
 
They were just like the houses back on Trost. Shingled roofs that looked like the scales on a dragon, arched doorways, and wooden-carved dragon heads were carved into the top of each building. The only difference in these houses were the rectangular holes that were obviously cut into the roofs. Did they want us to freeze to death during the night?
 
“Alright, three to four Vikings per house to avoid clutter when you all get your dragons,” One of the men said to another. Nodding, the man who was just spoken to hopped on his dragon and walked towards the big group of dragon-less Vikings before him. Guess it’s time to make some friends.
 
---
 
I got assigned to a house with, what I could only guess was the head of a Deadly Nadder carved into the top of the arched entryway. The first thing I noticed was that damn hole in the roof. Aside from that, there was a kid who was unpacking his stuff on one of the nearby “beds”, a slab of wood with a pillow and a blanket. He was small in stature and had a shaven head. The other kid across the room was the smiley freckled guy from earlier. Marco, I think it was. Great, I’m the last one here.
 
“So I’m given no choice to the bed I want?” I say looking above, noticing the fucking hole right over the last bed.
“Nope,” The bald kid smirks. Fan-fucking-tastic.
 
“I can switch, if its too much of a problem,” Marco smiles.
 
“No, it’s fine, I can just go with the other complainers and get a cover for that thing,” I point up at the roof. “What is it even for, anyways?”
 
“I think it’s for the dragons,” Marco says.
“Yeah, they like to watch you sleep, and think about how good you’ll taste,” Baldy says maliciously.
 
“That’s just perfect, now I know I’ll be the first one in the mouth of a dragon if we get attacked while we’re asleep or something,” I sigh.
 
“I’m Marco Bodt, by the way,” the freckled kid walks over and holds out his hand.

“Jean Kirschtein,” I took his hand and he smiled at me. Is this kid ever unhappy?
 
“You weren’t smiling at me earlier, right? When Shadis used his head as a battering ram against mine?” I slightly frown.
 
“I sure was!” The bald kid tunes in. “Oh, where are my manners…”
 
“Where are your manners?” I shot back.
 
“Connie Springer from the Isle of Ragako!” He jumps up from his bed and holds out his hand.
 
“Yeah, I caught that much before Shadis’ dragon picked you up with two of its heads,” I shook his hand.
 
“It wasn’t all that bad, it didn’t poison me and I swear to gods, his dragon smelled like chocolate! If you ask me, I want whatever kind of dragon he has!”
 
“It’s just the first day, Connie, you should probably find out more about the kinds of dragons before you up and decide what you would like right off the bat,” Marco tells him.
 
“Why would you care, Marco? You’re also aiming for the Center Guard, we won’t keep our dragons from this place anyways,” I huff. There’s no point in establishing a friendship with one if we’re just going to get cooler ones in their place. Since Marco’s shooting for Center Guard, he should at least know that.
 
“I think it’s best to make some memories, Jean. We’ll be raising them from hatchlings, there’s no doubt that we’re going to get attached to them,” Marco smiles.
 
“Raising them, then releasing them into the wild, probably for other vikings to fight against and kill in the future. If you ask me, I’d rather not go through that, especially if I come to really love the thing.”
 
I’m not going to get an emotional bond with a dragon, because everyone knows how that ends. If the Viking’s dragon dies, it’s like losing a relative or a really close friend. Of course, I’m here to avoid that exact thing from happening. Well, that and saving my own ass. Nothing these guys say can change my mind.
 
Theres a low roar and some banging on the front door. Time to get to the arena. Fixing my helmet, I head towards the door with Marco and Connie. Who knows what we’ll be doing on the first day, I hope it’s not just some kind of activity that involves writing notes.
 
---
 
As soon as I enter the arena, I instantly realize that theres only about thirteen Vikings here. Thirteen and the girl from earlier that was running around the arena as punishment. Did I miss a memo or something? How many dropped out since we were assigned to houses?! Shadis and his intimidating, to say the least, dragon stand next to a table. There are weapon crates along the walls, shields piled up on the floor next to them.
 
“We’ve only chosen a few Vikings for each arena. If we let a dragon loose, there’d be no room for you guys to run or hide for your lives,” Shadis states. Way to be blunt about it.
 
He holds out a book in front of him. A really big book.
 
“The Book of Dragons. The most important thing on this island. This will be your key to learning about and understanding the habits of dragons, both good and bad.” He tosses the brick of a book on the table. “Study up, you’ll be tested on Stoker class dragons next week.”
 
“What kind of test, sir?” The Viking from my island, Thomas, asks.
 
“Written and physical. You’ll be in the arena with two stoker class dragons and nothing but a shield to arm yourself with at first. There will be a weapons rack full of tools for you to use, but only if you can make it there fast enough.”
 
You can hear an audible gulp coming from a few of the Vikings. It’s not like they’re going to let the dragons kill us if we fail, right? If that’s the case, it would have been a better idea to stay back at home.
 
“So what you’re saying is that we have to kill the dragons or be killed by them?” Some brunette kid asks.
 
“Kill them or subdue them. We’d rather the latter, since we have a limited amount of dragons to work with here.”
 
The gate behind us opens and two Vikings wave Shadis over. His dragon follows close behind.
 
“Don’t slack off, trainees. Unless you want to end up dead by the following week,” our superior calls out.
 
“Wait, but we only have one book!” Connie yells.
 
Too late. The gate lowered and we were left here in the arena with weapons, shields, and the dragon book. If there weren’t vikings and their dragons watching over us from outside the chained arena, I’m pretty sure at least one of the vikings in here would have chosen the destructive items over the book.
 
They keep the dragons locked up in rooms surrounding the arena, by the sounds coming from behind the thoroughly locked up gates. One wrongly pulled lever and we’re all going to be torched.
 
“I guess the right thing to do before we start reading is to introduce ourselves,” A shorter blonde guy says.
 
“Armin Arlert, right?” Marco asks. “From Shinganshina?”
 
Right. He was there when the ice spitting dragon totaled the island. Armin nodded to Marco.
 
“I came here with my friends, Eren and Mikasa,” Armin gestures to the brunette kid from earlier and a rather beautiful lady, if I do say so myself.
 
“That must mean that you three are all from the Isle of Shinganshina?! No way! I’ll have to ask you guys some questions about the big-ass dragon that attacked! I heard it got all of the dragons that weren’t with their riders to fight with it!” Connie says excitedly.
 
“Hey, Connie, I wouldn’t bring that up right now…” Marco thoughtfully states as everyone sat down.
 
“Nah, it’s fine. The dragon attack wasn’t all that bad. I mean, the Bewilderbeast couldn’t have doubled the Red Death in size,” Eren says. “I’m just surprised that it wasn’t associating with Vikings for the attack. The thing was intelligent, though, I’ll give it that. It didn’t exactly get the riderless dragons to fight, it seemed to have brought a wave of wild dragons with it when it arrived.”
 
“It wasn’t all that bad? What about all of the people that died? The Maria islands are now full of wild dragons that are extremely territorial and won’t let any Viking past without an extremely one-sided fight,” I sigh, propping my arm up on the table and resting my head in my hand.
 
“It wouldn’t be so one-sided if the Scouts had more Vikings to join them like I am,” Eren retorts.
 
“I wonder why no Viking joins the Scouts. Maybe it’s because of that fact that they go out to fight in unknown territory against clans and dragons that know the lay of the land better than they do? It’s just a thought, you know, and the reason why they have the highest death rate out of all of the branches.”
 
He’s completely and utterly pissed.
 
“You trying to start something, Kirschtein?” He stood from his spot.
 
“If that’s what you want. After all, you’re pretty keen on fighting, am I right? There are some axes and swords over in the corner…” I slowly got up.
 
We were so brutally interrupted by the loud bellow of a dragon and some loud banging as the running girl from earlier leaned against a gate to catch her breath. She stumbled forwards and continued her agonizing route around the perimeter of the arena.
 
She just gave me a brilliant idea.
 
“Eren, how about instead of fighting it out, you against me, we take this to a larger scale,” I glanced over to the gate. “Next week, when we’re in the arena against the dragons, we’ll see who can kill a dragon first. How about it?” I hold out my hand. Theres no way he can pass this up.
 
“Eren, stand down,” Mikasa puts her hand on Eren’s shoulder.
 
“Gods, Mikasa, I don’t need you to tell me its too dangerous,” He pushes her hand off and shakes mine. “It’s on, Kirschtein.”
 
---
 
We finished up the introductions after about ten minutes or so. Eren Jaeger, Mikasa Ackerman, and Armin Arlert came from the Isle of Shinganshina. I already sort of knew Connie and Marco from being housemates, the tallest guy in the room went by the name of Bertholdt Hoover, his friend who was only slightly shorter than himself’s name is Reiner Braun. A freckled girl who was about the same height as me, Ymir. The shortest girl in the arena, Krista. We even managed to get mutton-girl’s name, which turned out to be Sasha. Standing a little further away from the group, looking at the group gathered at the table with icy eyes, her name was Annie. Lastly, there was Thomas and Mina from the ranks earlier.
 
“This book isn’t going to read itself,” Armin states as he opened up to the first page of the massive book. Stoker Class, filled with dragons that exclusively breathe fire. Most, if not all Stoker dragons are immune to fire and can set themselves on fire. We’re definitely off to a good start. I can just picture the arena next week: On fire. There’s not much else to it.
 
“Okay, first dragon… Terrible Terror. Small dragons, roughly .46 meters in length,” Armin begins, pointing at the drawn picture of a gecko-like dragon. It had spines running along its back all the way to the tail, which ended with an arrowhead-like spike. The dragon itself didn’t look terrifying.
 
“That’s not bad at all, a Viking could easily take one of those down,” Reiner laughs.
 
“Well, it says here that they travel in packs,” Marco points to a line in the book.
 
“And they have pin-point accuracy when breathing fire,” Armin continues.
 
“I guess I spoke too soon,” Reiner says after a pause, crossing his arms.
 
“They tend to pick fights with one another, especially when it comes to food. Okay, now on to training one…” Armin scans the page. “Ah, here. They like chasing lights?”
 
“Oh, I know! Like this!” Connie takes off his helmet and positions it in his hands to reflect a light onto Armin’s forehead, missing and shining it right into his eyes.
 
 “Okay, okay, I get it!” Armin covers his eyes with his arm. “I almost forgot this part… They’re noisy and can’t set themselves on fire. Now on to the next dragon.”
 
He turns the page, revealing a drawing of a vicious looking dragon on fire. It had two pairs of massive horns behind its devilish eyes. It was adorned with a double set of spines along its back, which came together at its tail to form a long fin on its tail. The snout was rather long on the beast, and its claws looked like it could tear apart a viking in two seconds flat. This dragon was two-legged, but walked with its wings and feet.
 
Eren points to the dragon’s long face and smirks at me, “Hey, it kind of looks like you, Jean!” He laughs. A few others started to giggle, and that earned them a Kirschtein death glare.
 
I hope the dragon we face next week eats Jaeger.
 
“Monstrous Nightmare. 21 meters long. Fearless and proud dragons that have the capability of setting itself on fire. They know of their strength, and are usually the first to a fight, and the last to leave,” Armin read, “One way of handling this dragon is to clamp its mouth shut or pin its horns to the ground. Another, which is probably the better option if you don’t want to be killed, is to drop all of your weapons, including a shield...”
 
“Wait, AND your shield? How the hell is this method less life-risking?!” I yell.
 
“You have to show it that you’re not a threat unless you want to be treated like one,” Annie says from her spot away from the table.
 
“Monstrous Nightmares aren’t built just for fighting, some have been seen with fish skewered on their back spines to save them for later snacks. They must also be able to cook them when igniting themselves, too,” Marco adds on to the previous information.
 
Connie pulls the book over to look at the dragons abilities, “Hey, it says that they can knock over trees and even push some dragons out of the sky with a beat of its wings, and send Vikings flying themselves with a smack of their tail! Not to mention, they’re super fast on land, in air, and in water!”
 
When summing up what we’ve learned so far, we’re so fucked if we have to fight this dragon.
 
“Hey, how about we move on to the next dragon, they can get much worse, can they?” Mina says. Armin turns the page…
 
And they do get worse. Much worse.
 
A dragon that is 33 meters long with a wingspan of at least 40 meters with the ability to light itself on fire and fly at such a speed to be dubbed as the second fastest dragon. It was called a Typhoomerang, and Eren so kindly pointed out that the commander of the Scouts had one. The book says they were impossible for a Viking to ride, due to their ability to spin in such a way to create a fire cyclone, so I doubt he was telling the truth.
 
Next in the book, a Fireworm. The cockroaches of dragons. Ironically, the book says that they are afraid of fire, even though they can superheat their skin to temperatures hotter than the sun. I guess they live in hives since the book also says that they make some sort of “fire” honey that gives them their ability. That must also explain the Queen Fireworm; a 25-meter version of the .2-meter Fireworm that can breathe a highly potent fire that apparently rivals the Bewilderbeast’s ice breath.
 
We kept going over the different Stoker class dragons, dreading over which ones we’d have to be in the arena with until the sun was starting to set.
 
Off in the distance, we hear a horn, signaling that the training period is over. Finally, time to get some dinner and at least try to get some sleep. We all get up, stretch a bit from sitting for hours, and file out of the arena. Actually, all except for mutton-girl. She still had about an hour left of running.
 
Needless to say, dinner in the great hall of this training academy was nothing like I expected at all.


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