I see people who, on the surface, seem nothing like the humanity we've known. They have freedoms and luxuries I could not have imagined on my own. And yet they are familiar.

[Armin stirs his drink with the straw, watching the cream melt into the frozen cream. What a curious thing to do - make a drink out of dairy, freeze it, and then place more milk on it. He's fairly sure it's making him ill, so he's leaving it alone for now, even as his tongue craves the sweetness.]

Their military has brought us here against our will for the purpose of recruitment. [Clothe it however you want, that's what they've done. 'Good guys' or not.] That is incredibly risky. It would have to have been born out of a serious belief that their way of life has been, or will be, threatened.

[Armin pauses, watching a girl close to his age perform tricks on her hovering skateboard on the sidewalk outside for some admiring friends.]

...I see people who are enjoying their day-to-day existence, speaking to each other in the way most people do, even if I don't understand all of their words. I see people who are content in imagining their existence is not fragile.

[It reminds him of Shiganshina. Armin didn't hold many people there in high opinion. But they hadn't deserved to die the way they did. Not even the children who routinely beat the shit out of him. They were only echoing what they knew. And now he is twice their age, and they are in the belly of a titan, or crushed beneath stone rubble.]

And yet that is a quality that needs to be protected.