Disclaimer: I dun own Shingeki No Kyojin. Don't want to have that level of responsibility on my shoulders, thank you. And there's a crossover that I also don't own but let's keep that a secret for now (the crossover, not the fact that I don't own it) (obviously) (wait, what?).

There should not be manga spoilers. I do read the manga, but I don't think I'm dealing with any current events in the manga.

heichou = corporal. Or lance corporal. Military distinctions are fun and utterly obscure to me.

#

"Eren."

Eren looked up from making a final check of his 3D maneuver gear before the scouts moved out for the day. Immediately, he was on his feet, standing at attention for his superior.

"Levi-heichou."

The corporal had been leading them for the past four days, following their separation from Erwin's larger group. It was odd to be away from the comrades Eren had been making, but not unfamiliar. More tense by far since it was his first mission with Levi since getting the corporal's team killed – and he was again being told to trust Levi's judgment.

Nobody knew the plan for their breakaway group, only that it had been approved by Erwin. An undercurrent of fear and excitement, different from the normal thrill of encountering Titans, ran through the group. Eren saluted.

"Today we're going into the woods," Levi said flatly.

Eren nodded even as questions rose in his throat. He had a set list of questions he ran through in his head when told things like this. Are we going to encounter Titans – maybe. Are we going to kill Titans – yes. What am I going to do – the thing I'll least regret.

It usually worked, when he paid attention to it. Problem was, he wasn't always aware what the thing he would least regret was until after he had done it. The thirty-something year old corporal was proof of that.

While getting into formation, he found himself traveling alongside Mikasa, which was fairly rare. She always contrived to be next to him, but it rarely happened by actual assignment.

"Any rumor where we're heading?" Eren asked. She shrugged and looked like she knew no more than he did. To tell the truth, it was more worrying to have her near than it was to have her far away. It meant the corporal thought there was a chance they would run into serious trouble and it was better to have his homicidal adopted sister around.

#

"The woods again," Armin murmured to himself. It was his plan, based on an old legend he had heard years ago, and it still sounded stupid coming out of Levi's mouth in the war planning room, stupider getting explained in detail by Armin himself. It had been the first time Armin had participated in the planning of a scouting mission that took place outside the walls and wasn't a Rescue Eren maneuver. Depending on how all this went, it might be the last time he was able to contribute to humanity.

He looked up to see Levi looking back at him.

"T-there's no way this could—" Armin began to say and the corporal returned to looking without emotion at the horizon straight ahead.

"Don't jinx it before it's even begun, kid."

"But it's—but it's something I read in a book!"

"Yes. And that book survived the Titans." Levi looked back over his shoulder and Armin couldn't meet his gaze, eyes darting down to the reins. It did mean something didn't it, that the book had survived the Titans. Someone had wanted to keep it safe very much and had done so.

Who would do that for things that weren't true?

They had reached the gigantic trees without encountering any Titans. Every time Armin saw the trees, he remembered why tourists wanted to come to places like this. Just seeing the trees wasn't enough, you wanted to wrap words around them to try and contain what you were seeing. The trees were natural pillars against the sky, taller than Titans and sturdier too. Trees thick enough that travelling around them required passing entirely out of sight for several seconds.

"Heichou—" Armin began.

"We're heading in," Levi told the man on his other side, an experienced recruit named Gowan. "Keep cover on the entrance to the forest. If there are any major threats, let us know. We'll have someone high enough to see them."

Gowan immediately dropped back to report this as Levi, Armin, and two recruits named Dange and Ruther, both male, moved into the towering forest.

"You'll be doing the talking, kid," Levi told him casually, when they had been travelling about half an hour. That assumes we find him, Armin thought to himself but he simply nodded instead of commenting. Since Levi hadn't been looking at him, the corporal looked back at him irritably.

"You have an opinion about that?"

"No, Levi-heichou!" Armin back-pedaled furiously. "I just—no, I-I'm good with talking."

I have to be.

They rode on. Dange and Ruther were quiet types who played scout for their comrades for several hours, until Levi and Armin took to scout positions. It was calming to flit about the trees, knowing that few Titans (if any) would venture into the forests. Things were going well, though Armin couldn't say if they were near or far from the man. The book had spoken, very resolutely, as if the country in question had existed. There was a map and a town (or where used to be a town) and that the man lived in a hut at the edge of a channel of water. It must have existed.

After Eren's transformation into a Titan and the revelations made about Titans since then, Armin would believe a lot of things. One of them was that this man existed and could help humanity. That he would help humanity.

Provided he was still alive.

"Kid. Are we near?" Levi asked and Armin looked up, startled. He hadn't even heard the sound of the older man's 3D gear.

"I-I think so. I'm going to go down and check on the ground."

Levi remained above as Armin went down, which was probably better for defense. The trees were so thick that a Titan over three meters would have trouble moving in them. An armed fighter, coming from above, would be more effective than an armed fighter on the ground. And anything under three meters Armin should be able to handle on his own.

It would be the only thing.

I'm guessing. I'm guessing, I'm completely and totally guessing now! The blonde thought in a tightly constrained panic. Do I tell him? Do I tell him I don't even have my bearings, much least an idea of where we are?

The book hadn't been specific about how to find the man. The people had just… walked there and pounded on the door and found the man. Granted, they had had a dead guy. Armin felt terror rise in his throat and suppressed it. They were not going to have any fatalities on this trip. Not on a trip he'd proposed.

Finding nothing, he fired his gear and joined Levi roughly forty feet above the forest floor.

"Well?" Levi said.

"We should go back to Dange and Ruther, Levi-heichou."

Levi looked over at him coldly. "That wasn't an answer to my question."

Panic! Armin's brain screamed, and he didn't.

"This isn't the place."

"Can you get us to the place?"

"I can," Armin said, with confidence he didn't feel. "It's near a channel of water."

"Oh is that all." There was sarcasm in Levi's voice and he pushed off towards the camp.

"It is there, sir!"

"You read it in a book and now you want a channel of water nowhere near here. Why did you think it would be here?"

Armin struggled to keep up. Levi's irritation was showing in his speed and, when the corporal drew far enough away, Armin raised his voice and shouted.

"Because it was on the map. Or-or past here! There wasn't a point of reference for distance, but this is where it matched!"

Levi didn't respond. His pace had slowed though and that was a mercy to Armin. They reached Dange and Ruther, who had been following them with the horses. Levi turned the entire troop around simply in heading back the way they had come, dropping after a few minutes to retake his mount.

"No luck?" Ruther murmured as Armin landed and mounted. The blonde shook his head.

"I know it's this way. I just couldn't find it yet."

The look Ruther shot him was cunning. "You want more time?"

Armin looked at the other boy in surprise. Ruther had been in the company maybe six months and didn't do much to call attention to himself. He was a tall, gangly boy, with freckles and a sharp look about the eyes, as if beneath the ginger brush of hair, he was planning something. Despite his height, he was probably younger than Armin. The taller boy led his horse closer to the distance of a comfortable conversation.

"Why do you ask," Armin said carefully, making sure they were still trailing Levi and Dange at a safe pace.

"Dange has never been here before and really wants to climb one of those trees to the top."

"That's really dangerous! The branches get thinner, and—"

"Yeah, but he wants to. And, if he does, it's gonna take Levi-heichou at least half an hour to get him down. He's the best, but after whatever happened with Eren, he's slower about getting people. Maybe it's his age."

"Even if he got up there, it's harder to use maneuver gear with thin branches. Every second spent chasing him endangers the group outside of the woods, who are risking Titans so we can be here."

"Yeah." Ruther fixed a challenging stare on Armin. "For nothing, unless you find what we came for."

There it was. The statement that he was outright useless and even if Dange didn't do this tree-climbing stunt, everyone had risked their lives on Armin's bad idea.

"E-even so—!"

"Even so." Without warning, Ruther reached over and shoved Armin – hard – and the blonde fell off the horse. Scout horses didn't bolt but Armin scrambled back anyway, becoming tangled in his cloak.

"What's going on?" Levi called back.

"Arlert fell off his horse!" Ruther called. "We're fine!" Then he winked at Armin and readied his maneuver gear, looking at the trees above. The gear fired.

"I lied! I want to go up there!" Ruther said, mounting the surrounding trees with great speed. He was sixty feet and out of reach before Armin could even get to his feet. Ahead, he could hear Levi cursing, riding back with Dange.

He could stay and hang out with Dange, waiting for Levi to bring Ruther down and thrash discipline into him. Or…

Armin moved further back into the undergrowth, crawling backwards on his hands. He had skinned them in the fall but not badly. When Levi and Dange arrived, his absence was noted, but Levi took to the trees instead, as Ruther had thought he would. Armin continued into the undergrowth, keeping as quiet as possible.

He had maybe an hour on his own. It was well known that the corporal administered his own corporal punishment, in the absence or presence of Erwin. Ruther probably understood that he was going to take some damage from this stunt. But Levi had been temperate the past few months – or rather the company had been temperate. Ruther probably hadn't seen Levi annoyed.

But Armin still remembered Eren's introduction to the corporal vividly. He had done the math and was fairly sure Levi could break his ribs with one swift kick. So. Use this time wisely. If worst came to worst, he could console himself in knowing that he never could have stopped Ruther anyway.

###

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in SNK. I'm not even going to pretend I'm not a very very very new fan. But I'm writing this for fun so... if there are errors (which there probably are) I am sorry, you're probably right, and I am just really lazy about fact-checking for a series so intent on driving me mad.

Also Ruther and Dange don't exist in Titanverse! So, don't bother worrying about them, they'll probably get eaten in the next few chapters in the way of all things Titan.