A cold winter day covered in an alabaster white snow reflecting radiating sun light. It wasn't some kind of special extraordinary day, just a lot of responsibilities, little of my beloved research, getting up early. The constant drinking of strong black coffee was the only solution for me to stay up long after midnight and to have enough time to get through the huge hill of papers, which were still falling on my head from above. Unfortunately, just that day my precious supplies of caffeine ran out so I had to, thanks God, leave my work for a little while. I intended to creep to the kitchen and usurp the one of the coffee cans for myself.

As I went out of the building to cross the courtyard, I sighted a lot of soldiers including my friends, who were standing in the tamped snow with unhidden interest watching something while they were shouting and talking out loud.

I shivered with cold, because I was too lazy for wearing my uniform jacket at least, so I crossed my hands on my chest as a little protection against chill around. With cracking sounds of my shoes, when they met the crunchy snow crystals on the ground, I walked to two tall blond-haired men hidden in green uniform cloaks. They had been just murmuring with their eyes looking somewhere in front of them, when I jumped to them to interrupt their whispering conversation.

"Who are you slandering?" I shouted at them with laughter and both of them jumped a bit as they got startled, when I forcibly stepped between them.

"Oh, Hanji. Not so loud!" the taller blond man with barely noticeable moustache under his nose admonished me.

"The new guy just arrived," the younger man by my left hand with an angelic soft face and quite feminine voice explained to me.

"Yeah, right. The new guy," I nodded understandingly and I finally noticed what the bunch of the soldiers was scrutinizing.

Our commander Erwin was standing firmly beside his horse while speaking to some really young, black-haired boy, whose height barely reached Erwin's shoulders. He was wearing dark brown cloak and his bored annoyed face was apparent even in the shadow of his wrongly placed hood.

"He's quite small," Nanaba states with his high voice as he observed the newbie.

"Yeah, like a child. He won't survive his first expedition," Mike uttered sceptically.

"Remember, that you said that about me as well," I said in response with slightly self-satisfied voice, "and now we are both the squad leaders."

"I wonder, where Erwin found him," Nanaba continued talking like he wasn't listening to me and Mike at all.

"He is said to be a thug," the one soldier stepped in the conversation, when he heard him and a friend of his next to him added immediately, "somebody said, that he was a member of underworld."

"Bullshit," Mike refused to admit to himself, while everyone kept watching Erwin talking to the young man.

The black haired man hardly ever opened his mouth to reply. I couldn't help myself but something about him interested me. Maybe it was his inaccessible nature, the strangely short figure or the ominously narrowed eyes.

"Anyway, I would like to know how he smells," Mike stated in dreams and he turned to his friends to find out if anybody heard him, "However, how I see, I am not as much interested as Hanji," and he caught the top of my head, which I had curiously inclined to the one side. He ruffled my hair a bit and drove me away of my little distant scrutinizing look, with which I observed the newbie.

Everybody started laugh out loud and I quickly removed his hand off my head, irritated with his thought. The young man got probably interrupted due to our laughter and in that moment my eyes for just a fraction of a second met the sight of future humanity's strongest soldier for the first time.

I was walking in the corridor of the fortress with hands full of papers. I didn't even see what's in front of me but fortunately I knew the path to my workroom or rather the room, where I had been usually falling asleep and getting up on the wooden table with some reports glued to my face, by heart. I just had enjoyed a little fun on the expedition and I was immediately back and the paperwork continued.

"And there she is," I heard Erwin's voice somewhere in front of me.

"What do you need, commander?" I asked with difficulties, because the part of my papers just fell into my face.

"I was thinking, that all of the captains should know first, that there is somebody who is going to join them soon," Erwin stated.

"Oh I see! So Petra was finally promoted. Good for her!" I chirped with joy in a false idea, still buried in papers, and due to it deprived of the look on my superior.

"Not really. Actually the new captain is standing with me here right now," said Erwin little annoyed and grasped my reports and pull them out of me.

"That a pi-," I started but I stopped as I caught sight of the newbie beside Erwin, "-tty…" I finished after a moment.

The young man looked at me neutrally with his metallically grey narrowed eyes, like he was searching for something. After a while he stretched out his pale but through the shirt noticeably worked out hand to me and I silently held it.

"Rivaille. Nice to meet you," he uttered simply with his piercing eyes and for a moment he grasped my hand unbelievably firmly.

"Hanji Zoe. Pleasure of mine," I said in response automatically with neutral rather silent voice.

Finally I heard his voice, I thought to myself. It was deep voice with a peculiar unordinary voice colour and an unspecific monotone intonation.

"I have to go, see you around, Hanji," Erwin's voice interrupted my thoughts and when I turned to face him, I just saw his back, as he was quickly walking somewhere.

I turned back and I wanted to bow for my papers lying in the column on the floor, but Rivaille was faster and he handed me them.

"Thanks," I uttered and overtook the reports from him, "hey and were you really in the underworld?" escaped from my mouth because of my curiousity.

"Exactly as I thought," he stated with the amount of the satisfaction in voice, "shitty glasses and the huge knowledge of gossips," he added ironically and sneered.

His offence surprised me, but I resolutely didn't want to make a scene.

"Oh yeah, I might have a glasses but at least I don't barely measure one and half of meter," I remarked with sweet smile and I turned my back to him.

I was well aware, that he was piercing me with his sceptically half-closed eyes all the way to the door of my workroom, where I disappeared.

Titans just smashed through the outer wall. Every member of Scouting Legion was drafted to the fights. I couldn't suppress a certain wave of excitement as well as the fear, which were devouring me. I ran to my squad and together we went to the second wall.

I saw them. The millions of titans were streaming through the rift in the wall. We fought as we could but in every case the hole in wall couldn't be filled by us therefore the enemies continued infiltrating Shinganshina.

We might have been fighting a day, maybe two. The supplies kept vanishing as well as the ranks of soldiers. I had a feeling, that my hands were covered in more titan blood than for my whole career in army. Even though the blood almost immediately evaporated, the feeling persisted as well as the hopelessness because of the lost battle in advance.

I was exhausted. I stood in the wide street on the nape of just killed titan, who fell on the corpse of another member of his kind who I slaughtered as well. One quite small titan ran to me. I drew my swords and I cut a huge piece of flesh of his nape. Another titan fell victim to my blades.

I was out of breath watching, how two just extremely tall titans headed for me. It would be interesting to scrutinize how the steam ran from the titan corpses but not after two days of fighting. I was almost out of gas in the tanks of my 3DMG, so I was quite reconciled with the fact, that I wouldn't be able to slay both titans. Unfortunately the gas wasn't even enough for me to escape.

Just in that moment a dark smudge appeared above titan heads, which in the split second killed both titans. After the copybook example of lightingspeed slaughter I eventually saw him. Rivaille flew above my head and fractionally looked at me. After he landed on the ten-metre-high building by my left, he threw away his broken bloody blades.

"Erwin ordered everybody to retreat," he shouted at me down, "do you have enough gas?"

I shot my left hook of my manoeuvre gear and I wanted to swing up on the roof in front of him. Instead of it I felt how the gas tanks ran out, so the pull up stopped. To my luck my hook undid and I started falling to the ground.

Rivaille promptly caught me by my left hand and brought me to the roof.

"As I was expecting this," he stated annoyingly, as he dropped me on the roof tiles, "I thought you would have been smarter, four-eyed."

"Charming as ever," I replied at once, rubbing my arm, which he caught me by.

"Charming my ass," he uttered and without asking or slightest warning he grasped me around my waist and took me to the rest of Scouting Legion.

„I am so much grateful that he picked me to his squad," said a petite ginger woman with delicate eyes already several times with her surprisingly quite sound voice.

The embarrassed blush were placed on her at another time completely calm and serious face and something more than just simple undying loyalty to her superior was reflecting in her eyes. I smiled when I saw her like that. It was such obvious.

"Quite a long time now I've been noticing how he sometimes stares at me while I'm practicing," she told me with discomfiture and her skin got a bloody red shade, "I was always nervous about it. I didn't want to embarrass myself. You know, what I mean."

I nodded. It was very cute to see my friend like that, especially when I knew about all of these 'secret' sights of her superior from the first hand. Rivaille had been considering her as a potential member of his elite squad for already long time. Despite his equivocal style of talking, with which he always thoroughly hid the real meaning of his words, I managed to guess, that even she wasn't quite indifferent to him. Yet still a little dagger of jealousy gnawed me on my chest and I felt certain wave of disappointment, when I realized it.

"I hope I won't let him down. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did so," Petra stated and caught her own head in embarrassment, trying to calm herself down.

"It will be fine. You're a great soldier and I know, he has a liking for you," I conveyed to comfort her but I felt that invisible dagger by my heart again.

"Do you really think so? The girl asked unbelievingly and hugged me afterwards I nodded to her question with honest grin.

We were sitting quite a long time in the stable still talking. Neither she nor me wanted to go back to our responsibilities. Sometimes we laughed a lot, sometimes we talked or gossiped about our comrades. It was quite nice time.

"Sorry to interrupt your feminine chattering, but I need to speak to you, Petra," too familiar voice sounded behind our backs.

The red-headed girl blushed immediately, like she would have swallowed her own tongue, absolutely unable to talk.

"When you so violently cut off our conversation, may I at least know, what is that important, that you bother yourself to come to us personally?" I refused to give up and I turned my head to face him.

"That's none of your business, four-eyed," Rivaille threw at me impatiently.

"Well then, see you," I resigned and without showing it, I stood up with little bit of sadness to leave them alone.

Just before my leave I tapped Petra's shoulder to encourage her and I left the pair of soldiers in stable for their own. As soon as I closed the door, I had both good and bad feeling at once. I didn't know, what was going to happen in there, maybe he just really came to say her something important. In every case I envied her so much.