Hanji Zoe was an interesting person. Always eccentric, sudden, and impulsive. Maybe a bit insane, too. She was constantly coming up with endless ideas for crazy stunts and experiments, maniacally laughing all the way. So, with that in mind, it was no surprise when she suddenly ran into the mess hall during breakfast, on the day when all but a few poor souls were relatively free, and slammed her hands down on Armin's table, yelling his name and simultaneously quieting the room. "Y-yes?" He stammered, obviously not expecting to be the victim of one of her new ideas. She leaned over and whispered something in his ear, Armin's face changing from surprised to suspicious, interested, and overall unsure. Either way, when she backed away again he hesitantly said "Okay," nodding slowly. This got the attention from anyone who hadn't already been curiously staring.
Spinning around to face the rest of the room, Hanji called out to everyone quietly, but just loud enough for them to all hear. "Alright, everyone, listen up! I just thought up this brilliant new test! Originally, the idea was to somehow have a titan ingest this," she pulled out a small vial of a thick silver liquid that everyone had somehow missed before, "and, if all goes well, it would mess with its mind and switch the 'offensive' to 'defensive.' Basically, it should swap the personality to the opposite and, seeing as titans only really seem to have a 'eat humans' personality, they might just leave us alone! It's not permanent yet, which is good because I still have to test it on someone! And that brings me here. 'Why test it in the mess hall with Armin,' you say? Well, because I'm not just testing it on Armin.. but on Levi, too! Obviously, he wouldn't voluntarily take it so I'm going to slip it into his morning tea, when he's too groggy to really notice. It would be way too suspicious if I brought him tea, and now's the only time he might not see something else being slipped into his drink." She took a deep breath. "Any questions?"
One recruit towards the back shakily raised her hand. Hanji looked towards her, expectantly. "Ah, why test it on the Captain and Armin of all people?" The mad scientist chuckled and clapped her hands together. "Glad you asked! You see, in order to see the best and most reliable results, I had to chose two or more people with intense but nearly opposite personalities. After some thinking, I decided these two would be the most effective pair," she said, grinning. The girl who had spoken nodded and blinked, put off by the ongoing quiet chuckle. It was kinda creepy, honestly. Sometimes Hanji was concerning.
Another soldier raised his hand, although less hesitant than the first. "Why are you telling us this?" He seemed skeptical, which wasn't unexpected. He wasn't the only one who didn't seem as elated as the glasses-wearing maniac. Said glasses-wearing maniac ignored this however, and excitedly answered the inquiry. "Oh! I just wanted to warn you," she said sweetly; almost too sweetly.. The same squinty eyed man was about to ask something again, likely something rude, but was abruptly cut off by the sound of foot steps from the hall outside the main door to the mess hall. "He's here.." was whispered by someone; no one knew who.
That was when the man himself walked in, wearily glancing around at the unnaturally quiet room. Immediately, the hall burst into forced conversation and Levi shook his head slightly. Something was up... Carrying his mug of morning tea by the top as usual, he headed over to his designated table and sat down slowly. He sipped from the cup before setting it down, right next to Hanji. The Captain didn't seem to notice as the surrounding survey corps soldiers collectively held their breath and a small amount of silvery liquid was poured into his beloved tea, instead his attention being swallowed by the thin stack of papers that needed reading, signing, and filling out. After scanning the top page, he sighed and reached for the tea without looking. Everyone watched out of the corners of their eyes as the unexpecting, tired out leader took a long gulp from the infested beverage.
Levi only seemed to notice the now direct stares after he set down his mug and looked up. Raising one eyebrow, he glanced around. "Any particular reason why you brats are staring at me? I'm pretty sure I don't have anything on my face." He wasn't all that shocked when Hanji nervously spoke up from behind him. "Hey Levi.. feeling any different at all..?" Levi turned around slowly and glared holes into her eyes, emotionlessly saying, "What did you put in my drink?" The scientist laughed a bit. "Oh, nothing!" She gasped suddenly, whipping around and exclaiming, "Armin! I nearly forgot about you. Whoops." She reached into her jacket and pulled out the vial again, ignoring Levi's death glares, and handed it to the fidgety blonde to swallow the rest. With hardly any pause, he drained the delicate glass and set it down, all with a completely straight face.
It barely took a second for the stony man to put two and two together, and instead of blowing up in anger or sending them all to do chores for their entire free day like they all expected, he seemed to deflate. Which was very strange. Either the personality-switch worked, or something else was very, very off. However, it seemed that the former was the case when their beloved captain looked up at Hanji, saying in an.. off voice, "You.. you tricked me?" Upon closer inspection, one would see the stone cold, fearless, emotionless soldier attempting to hold back tears. Obviously, even though this was expected, the one behind it all wasn't comfortable with her friend looking so broken. She wasn't the only one who was bothered by it, though.
"Aww, is the fearless wittle soldier gonna cry? Boo hoo!" Not a single person didn't look up in shock at kind, shy, innocent Armin when he rudely teased the distressed captain. It was so amazingly out of character that it took a second for quite a few to remember the personality-swaping potion out of pure shock. However, said distressed captain didn't know that this wasn't really Armin speaking, and assumed that the insult was sincere. One could practically feel him tense up and quiver oh-so-slightly. "Sh-shut up! That's an order!" Armin only laughed. "You call that an order? You're so fucking weak! I can't believe someone who would cry over a simple tease! I have no idea how you got to even survive in the military for more than a year! Must be pure luck, huh? No way someone as pathetic as you could have the skills, let alone support, to get any kind of respect. I'm sure everyone'd agree with me." He sneered as Levi bit his lip and tried his best to stay strong.
Suddenly, all malice seemed to vanish as he gasped and turned regretful and guilty looking. It was as if the real Armin was back. "Oh my god, I am so so sorry, I don't.. Hanji is it supposed to do that? Oh, I'm so sorry, please don't cry-" and, just like that, he was gone. His face straightened out again and he stood up, crossing his arms. He started walking out of the room but paused right by the doorway. Without looking back, he seemed to argue with himself before quickly and lowly saying "Sorry," and leaving. The door hadn't closed completely when Levi sniffed and cleared his throat.