Canon Vampy Submission

Reposted here

I don't know if this counts because it's left ambiguous and posted 4-5 minutes before the deadline (because yes, I stalked PST time to make sure I didn't miss it) but eh, worst case scenario I got a good first chapter out of it #SpookyTeamsEvent

It all started with the vampires. Initially, the had been the ones who were banished to the confines of the underground because people no longer felt that they could control them, but as the years went by and human criminals were tossed into the decrepit place as punishment, eventually followed by the homeless, then really any other citizen who the rich folk above ground were inconvenienced by, the amount of vampires compared to humans was rather small, and just as their numbers decreased - either due to starvation or disease - the tales told about them did too.

This was something that had happened to stories many times before. Truth was told throughout the generations until the tellers no longer believed their own words. Where was the proof? There had been no proof of the existence of vampires in hundreds of years, nothing but a rumor at best, so it was natural for people to slowly turn truth into myth, and as the generations who had once told it as truth died out, all that was left was myth.

In near-present time, a few hundred years after the first telling of truth to myth, absolutely no one believed in the once feared yet respected clan. It had even gotten to the point that anyone who believed in them was considered touched in the head, and it hardly helped that they often were because one essentially had to be with how proof of existence was, well, nonexistent.

Naturally, this wouldn't make for the first time humans were wrong in their beliefs. Vampires did in fact still exist, very, very few, but they were still present.

One person who had always believed in the existence of vampires went by the name of Erwin Smith. His father was one those "touched in the head" who hadn't quite been found out, but he believed so whole heartedly that he entrusted his son with what little he knew. Unfortunately, being so young at the time, Erwin had been considerably excited that his father had told him something that he had told no one else before, and he felt compelled to tell those closest to him, those he thought were friends.

His father had lost his job as a teacher not even a week later, and only Erwin knew the truth of why as what was published in the papers was fabricated. Of course it would be, no one would want to hear that their child was taught by someone insane.

Naturally, the boy-turning-man had learnt not to utter a word of his beliefs to another. Even when he gained friends so trustworthy that he put his life in their hands. Why? Because he couldn't risk losing his job. With the knowledge that no one would ever believe in what he did, he threw himself into the work of a scout within the Survey Corps, a job that he believed would eventually pay off because it was one beyond the walls, the very place vampires had believed vampires originated. The way his father had told it was that there were two mysteries in the world. One was the walls, how were they? Why were they built? Were the built to protect humanity or to cage them?

And two, where had vampires come from? Even if they were supposed unreal, the rumors had to come from somewhere, not unless someone about two thousand years ago had an epiphany and decided to spread the tale of a pale creature who survived off the blood of others. Yes, humans were an imaginative lot, but to that extent? Surely not.

Given those two mysteries and how both were just as forbidden as each other, it just couldn't be a coincidence. They had to be linked, they just had to be.

So, in present time, with all this build up, this dedication to keep going until he could finally prove what so many beleived myth, one could understand how the man must have felt when he himself came face to face with a vampire of the underground. One by the name of Levi who he himself had caught, with the help of his friend of course, a man by the name of Mike Zacharious, someone considered to be Humanity's Strongest. That would change later of course.

The "man" before him had a gaze of scrutiny that made him feel as if he was truly as crazy as his friends had told him he was, but the proof was all there in his kneeling form. Grey eyes, fair skin, capable of speed the human eye could barely , and a strength that greatly challenged that of his companion's. It was finally happening, he could finally prove that his father wasn't the mad man people thought he was, still thought he had been. Call it a leap, but he believed this was the real deal, and now that he had him within his grasp, he refused to let go.

"My name is Erwin Smith, and I have a proposition."