The three robbers

Each of the trio looks distinct. A wool cap and a short beard mark the stocky leader. The man carrying the axe is the eldest, lean and tall, with close-cropped blond hair and a wisp of mustache. Their third partner, who reaches the hideout last, is the youngest of the group, tidy in dress, clean-shaven, and brown-haired.

Profit drives the group, and human life barely enters the ledger. They cut down two adults on a doorstep without hesitation because the family itself is the merchandise: the leader calculates that people of Asian descent, all but extinct inside the Walls, will bring premium prices from underground buyers in the capital seeking sex slaves. His one regret is the killing of the mother, the pure-blooded Asian he considered the more valuable prize. The latecomer shows the same brutality, throttling a child in blind rage after discovering his dead partners.

The three come knocking at the Ackerman home in 844, when Mikasa is nine years old. Her father opens the door expecting Dr. Grisha Yeager and his son, and the leader drives a blade into him on the spot. Mikasa's mother fights back and dies when the axe wielder buries his weapon in her shoulder; he then knocks the girl unconscious with a punch, and the men carry her away.

At a remote cabin the leader and his axe-carrying partner wait for Mikasa to wake, bickering over the job. The axe-man doubts the girl's worth, noting her father showed no Asian features, and the leader snaps back that her mother would have brought the real money. A knock interrupts them: Eren Yeager, who found the bodies alongside his father, stands at the door playing a lost child. He stabs the axe-man the instant the man's guard drops, then drives a knife lashed to a broomstick through the leader's shoulder, climbing onto him, branding him an animal, and stabbing him until he dies.

The last robber returns to find his partners butchered. He kicks Eren across the room and begins strangling him, and Eren chokes out a plea for Mikasa to fight. Knife in hand, she hesitates until something wakes inside her, the surge of focus and strength carried in the Ackerman bloodline, and she drives the blade through his back and into his heart. Military Policemen alerted by Grisha later discover the three corpses. Six years on, as Eren in Titan form prepares to seal the breach at Trost, he recalls killing the leader and concludes that people who would strip away the freedom of others count for nothing, however strong they may be.