A war - that's what they say it was.

The War. The War that caused nearly the entirety of Earth to be covered in smoking potholes. What survived left little to the imagination - burning rubble, maybe some cities still intact, but all suffering from the toxic gases trapped by the dome of the atmosphere.

The Earth was in absolute shambles. Most of the population was annihilated, along with proper air for growing crops. Rivers and lakes ran polluted liquids containing unidentified chemicals.

Global temperatures fluctuated - from hot to freezing cold to warm. There was no scientific explanation anymore when the entire planet was so ruined.

Out from the steaming ashes several of the cities rose, their human survivors vainly trying to keep the population going. But with the skies a jaded grey from the polluted clouds, and the Earth still calibrating, many of the cities perished.

Of the remaining, the most successful was the city of Silrot, founded by a single Governor. For years it toiled, and the fruits of the people’s labours paid off.

Revived again were hydroponic farms, providing fresh sources of crops under controlled conditions. Rebuilt were the ruined buildings in the central, made usable for humans once more.

The people worked hard, even harder, because most of the adult population were wiped out, and when the time for rebuilding arrived, there just weren’t enough adults to make the work easy.

But it persisted, and it finally thrived.

And so Silrot lived, and for more years, there was peace.

-

The pads of her fingers come away coated in a fine layer of black as she lifts them off the grimy metal of her windowsill. The ash is contemplated, before she dusts her fingers off on her equally black pants.

The now open window lets a strain of a breeze in, ruffling her too-long hair and filling her sinuses with the acrid smell of chemicals and teeming bacteria. She looks past the outline of ruined rooftops blurred by fog, past the curling wisps of smoke rising from the distance, to the sky tinted a dark grey. It is marred by equally muted clouds.

She supposes it's early morning, because there's traces of pink crusting the tops of the grey clouds.

She focuses. There is the tangle of broken wires, of rubble long left untouched, of soot-blackened bricks and a landscape so ruined it seems irreparable.

It has been like that since the beginning of her life, and it has been like that ever since.

The windows are shut carefully. There's a certain sense of emptiness in the room; there's her night clothes on the mattress, the last of a loaf bread under an upended bowl - what she's normally see, but now the floor is barren sans the mattress, the rest of her meagre belongings tucked inside a bag slung across her shoulder.

This place has been as close to a home as anything for the past years of her life. She has the cracks in the grimy paint memorised.

She makes one last, cursory sweep of the room, a sense of detachment and of longing swelling up all at once. She her lips, feeling the dryness, and turns her back on the corroding walls. She isn't sure if she'll miss them.

Her boots make loud, and perhaps even comforting, sounds as she walks across the room, displacing puffs of dust. She opens the door, lays a palm over the pommel of her knife as she opens it partially. The hallway beyond is empty. As it should be.

She closes the door behind her and makes her way down the creaking stairs, eyes long accustomed to the gloom that clings to everything like a haze.

The cobbled streets are lined with decaying matter of unknown origin, possibly the source of the mounds of gaseous toxicity that pollutes the air. Her boots crunch against the refuse littering the ground, and she hastens her footsteps, the dormant hunger in her stomach increasing with the more energy she expends.

It's a route she usually never takes, for she'd always stopped or turned to go somewhere else in the Outer Ring. But today she continues on straight ahead, towards the craggy line of the Inner Ring’s protective wall.

The farther she walks, the more people she passes. The more people she passes, the closer she knows she is to the real outskirts of the Inner Ring.

She'd never had the privilege of staying in the Inner Ring. In fact, she'd never had the privilege of staying even remotely near the Inner Ring at all.

The region of her residence was as close to the wastelands of the Outer Ring as one could get. An expanse of rubble still undeveloped and unsafe for humans to live in, the Outer Ring was long regarded as the region of poverty.

The shops that she passes are foreign; signed with words she takes a while to decipher, filled with people who do a double take when they see how gaunt she is. There is poverty in the Inner Ring, but it is nothing like what breeds in the Outer Ring.

It is the lack of proper nourishment and the struggle of day to day life in the Outer Ring that drives her here. It is the need for stability that drives her here.

She'd been surviving pretty well on her own for the past years - ever since she could remember. But living on the sharp edge of hopelessness wasn’t pleasant.

Scrounging along the streets, hands digging into piles of potentially toxic waste, occasionally coming up with a tarnished metal piece with a net worth of enough to trade for some bread at the market. It wasn't a market as much as a black market, really, but everyone who lived in her area was as desperate as she was. Haggling was a given. She stayed away from the fights.

But she was resourceful, and that counted for something in the Outer Ring. It was the reason why she could feed and clothe herself for this long.

As she grew older and the waste piles within her radius had begun to show signs of uselessness, she knew that she had little choice on her course of action: it was do or die, and while life was never easy, she didn't fancy going down like that. A pathetic way to go, really. So it was do.

She'd seen them before - once or twice at most, through her barely open window. Garbed in similar swathes of dark green, with guns across their backs and knives on their belts. The vehicles they were on were large enough to transport them ten at a time comfortably.

Her streets are always silent, so their vehicles spurted out more noise than they were worth. But the people atop the vehicle seemed either too tired or too unwilling to speak, for they all remained mute.

At first she really had little idea who they were. But perhaps her prettiness scored her a couple of points with the rough women manhandling the goods at the black market. When she asked, they answered.

“The Garrison,” the one nursing an array of steaming loaves said, her voice rasping above the din of people haggling.

“They guard the wall, see.”

The woman then pointed to her right. The girl followed the line of her finger, turning her head to get a proper look. The wall looked like a barely visible straight line beyond the translucent fog that hung over the section of the city, as it had always looked.

The girl, even on her better days, was always quiet. Only spoke when spoken to, and never really bothered to hold a conversation for long. But then, she spoke.

“Why?”

The woman gave her a sharp look, but it wasn't as unkind as she'd expected. The girl’s gaze dropped.

“They keep things out,” the woman said gruffly, callused hands yanking at the collar of her worn shirt. “The wall keeps things out, and they keep things away from the wall.”

The girl remembered the guns across their backs, the lack of notable expression on their tired faces. It didn't seem like they were much ready to ‘keep things away’.

“What things?”

“None of us know, kid,” the woman muttered, looking away from the unsmiling mouth and the eyes far too bright than she's used to.

“They say it's the outside forces,” the woman sorting through the cloth stall’s array of fabrics interjected. “Plagues, enemies and the like.”

“Maybe The Central Governance should focus more on improving their resident trash disposal,” bread stall woman said, scowling. “The Outer Ring has been neglected for years.”

“Ain't going to be improved any time soon.”

“Tch.”

It didn't answer her question, not really, but she went away with a clearer idea of what they did.

Their lives didn't seem happy either, but she understood from a young age that happiness isn’t enough for survival.

She treks her way up, the Inner Ring wall looming closer and closer with every step covered. She squeezes past the crowds of people milling about the entrance. They are dressed in clothing that are neither ripped nor dirtied, which is rather foreign to her.

Her legs are sore; this is the farthest she's ever walked before, and she's extremely hungry. Even with water she has to scrimp - the water found in the Outer Ring is exceedingly polluted with God knows what, and purified water costs money.

She takes a sip now as she waits in the short line to enter the Inner Ring. Her identification card is checked (she never understood why people in the Outer Ring needed these; it’s not like they were ever treated as ‘citizens’ like those in the Inner Ring) and she's allowed to enter.

At the entrance she passes a troop of people dressed in soothing navy blue uniforms. She doesn't know who they are - Garrison? Maybe different ranks? She doesn't know.

She approaches one standing alone, watching the crowds of people passing by.

“Uh, good afternoon,” she stumbles over her speech. She's always embarrassed of how bad her grasp of the language is.

“Yes,” says the guard standing by the of the gate she'd entered through. His face is youthful but stoic. His tone matches the stoutness, and she wonders if it is because he has to sound like that, or because she is from the Outer Ring.

“I would like to know where the Cadet Corp Office is,” she says. She hesitates, “Please.”

The guard regards her with a certain air of contempt, but she keeps her back straight, looking at his shaded brown eyes. She knows what he's thinking - that a scrawny little girl from the Outer Ring has little place in the Inner Ring. And she kind of agrees.

“You don't need to know why,” she adds bravely.

She hears something that she's sure is the sound of the guard’s tongue clicking. He probably wasn't planning to ask, anyway. “I will bring you there.”

He turns, the blue of his uniform sticking out like a sore thumb amidst the sea of dark clothes. He doesn't wait for her, and she doesn't need him to.

There's a certain intimidation about walking in the Inner Ring - she's never been here in her life, and she feels extremely out of place.

The buildings are well-maintained. The streets are not filled with piles of waste reeking of chemicals and decomposition. It's a rather stark contrast, but if there's one thing in common, it's that there's still the presence of the fog that seems to cling on to buildings like a wet rag, and that the sky is still the same overcast grey.

A weak wind curls past her slouching frame, chilling what little surface she has to spare. She shivers but doesn't stop.

It's rather difficult to keep her eyes trained on both the brisk-walking guard and the unfamiliarity of the Inner Ring, but she manages it. She's just tired from all the walking at this point.

The buildings break suddenly, giving way to a huge compound housing a two squarish buildings made of grey brick. She takes a second to recognise the name of the place.

“Thank you,” she says, supposing that it's only polite to thank the guard.

He dips his head curtly before striding off, the pompous air about him intensifying. She wonders if it's a navy blue thing.

Loose gravel crunches under her worn boot soles as she opens the rusted gate and enters the compound. The courtyard isn't empty - there's a small group, maybe about five or six people, all but one dressed in long sleeved white shirts with the Cadet Corp crest on them.

They’re gathered round an instructor dressed in navy blue, who’s showing them a combat vehicle parked in front of the building.

They don't look as she passes, which she's thankful for. She doesn't want to have to look away from people who think she's going to fail.

She pushes the glass doors of the administrative office open. The interior is pretty cramped, with a reception desk in the middle, an extremely worn couch by the side and dying potted plants.

There's a lady sitting behind the counter, - early twenties, presumably - dressed in a black tank top. She has words tattooed across her collarbones in glyphs that the girl can't decipher. She's pretty but hardened.

“How can I help you,” the receptionist says monotonously.

“I'm here to register,” the girl says. Her voice sounds thin even to her, and she cringes internally.

The receptionist doesn't flinch, but her eyes flicker up and down, sizing the girl in front of her up.

“Don't look like you're much worth, kid,” the receptionist comments sardonically. “Cadets don't join to laze.”

The girl flushes slightly, but it doesn't show. She didn't know it was in this woman’s job nature to be so nosy. The women at the black market certainly didn't question her.

“I'm here to register.”

“Tch,” the receptionist reaches into a drawer under her desk and pulls out a sheet of paper with a bunch of glyphs printed onto it. “Identification card.”

The girl digs the hologram card from her sling bag. The receptionist refers as she scribbles words down onto the paper.

She slaps the paper down on the table, along with a ballpoint, sliding it towards the girl.. She points first at the chunk of text, then at the line at the bottom. “Read before you sign.”

The girl raises the paper up to read, taking some tries to read the words accurately. She can feel the receptionist’s eyes on her, but she ignores it.

She can almost feel it - the feeling that there has been many people of her kind coming here, taking hold of the same ballpoint as her, wishing for an alternative that isn't forthcoming.

I. Members of the Cadet Corps are to spend five years in training.

II. Members of the Cadet Corps are to join the Garrison in 10 years of service upon graduation.

III. Members of the Cadet Corps are to stay in the Cadet barracks. Personal belongings weighing not up to ten kilograms are permitted upon checking.

IV. Members of the Cadet Corps are to serve with honour and loyalty.

If pledged, provide your identification details and sign below.

She uncaps the ballpoint, exhales, and presses the tip of the pen to the line.

“Are you sure, kid?” The receptionist asks again, this time with little trace of condescension. She seems to be almost worried. The girl doesn’t understand worry. “It's fifteen years of service upon signing. It's a long commitment.”

There's the underlying message there. You don't look like you can handle it.

She probably can't. But it's not like she has any other options. She's starving and she doesn't have anything - or anyone - tying her down, anyway.

She signs a wonky signature above the line, disregarding the look on the receptionist’s face. It's none of the receptionist’s business what she wants to do or not.

“Effective as soon as possible,” the receptionist says, taking the paper from her.

“Immediately is possible,” the girl says. She can almost see the displeasure. Perhaps the warning reflects the receptionist’s own experiences - and regrets.

“Barracks are that way.”

The receptionist points to the side of the building. A crudely carved door stands somewhat off the middle. The girl can't lie about the fact that her stomach is hurting a bit from her anxiety.

Joining the military was never really an option to her, not really. Not until now. She had the alertness, but not the strength.

“You can still back out,” the receptionist says, paper in her hands. Her index and thumb grasp the edges of the paper, miming a ripping motion.

“Is it your job to dissuade people?” The girl asks, a hardness seeping into her voice.

The receptionist shakes her head. “Fifteen years is a really long time, kid. You don't understand. It could possibly even be a lifetime commitment. You're only fifteen. If you aren't willing to be committed...we don't like having deserters.”

Her meaning is clear.

The girl steps back slowly, and the woman lowers the paper, eyes studying the girl before her. The hollowed cheeks, thin lips pressed together tightly, the choppy dark hair, the soulless dark eyes with a single spark of life.

“Thank you, but I am set.”

She turns her back on the reception and walks.

She knows the implications of her actions - submitting herself to fifteen years of long-drawn monotony. Submitting herself to becoming one of them; the dead-eyed guards being driven to the wall, every day another day of dread.

But, as it does for a lot of people, life demands to be lived. And she understands. Her happiness isn't tantamount to her survival.

She understands. That life is a cycle of endurance, and she is determined not to lose.

-

Authors' Note:

(The Eve x Attack on Titan x Divergent inspired)

Hello dear readers! Welcome to ninecube and fluffsaur’s first collaboration. We sincerely hope that you will enjoy what is to come :>>> Do leave us comments on what you think!