In which Hanji is hungry, Mike and Erwin are horrible thiefs and Levi is just fed up with all of them.
Year 829, Survey Corps Headquarters
creak
Erwin winced as he tried (and failed) to sneak after his two friends who he, try as he might, simply could not fathom, even with that ridiculously large (and self-claimed intelligent) brain, how they managed to stay silent on their entire journey sneaking through the kitchen.
While they expertly avoided every creaking floorboard, dodged every piece of furniture and ducked under the left-open cupboard doors, Erwin somehow managed to step on every floorboard they had avoided and told him to watch out for, hit every table or chair that was directly in front of him and very visible, trip over every little thing on the way and even once banged his head on a cupboard causing the pots neatly stacked on top of each other there to tumble out and hallelujah, the sky rained pots and pans that all somehow hit the poor clumsy blond's head once or twice while making their merry way to the floor.
Luckily, the many members of the Survey Corps were spared the delight of waking up to the orchestra of various kitchenware hitting the floor as one of the culprit's companion darted forward with the grace of a deer and caught the falling monstrosities, looking back up at Erwin, who had his eyes squeezed shut and hands over his ears to block out the sound, with a frown.
"Honestly," scoffed Levi, one hand still holding a very tall stack of disturbed kitchenware, "you're like a titan trying to do a handstand."
Unfortunately, Erwin never had the chance of replying, as the very mention of titans had triggered the third person in the kitchen, an insane, hyper-active scientist to go into her even more insane titan-loving freaky maniac mode.
'TITAAAA-" squealed Hanji in excitement before a very irritated Levi stuffed a sponge in her enthusiatic, blabbering mouth with his other hand.
"Shut it, you titan-loving freaky menace." he muttered before freezing as footsteps were heard, heading towards the kitchen. Where they were.
And it wasn't the footsteps of the patrol guards (because they stomped along like a herd of elephants on steroids)(let's ignore the fact that they didn't have steroids at that time), it was the sneaky-sneaky-going-to-steal-food-from-the-kitchen-but-be-quiet-and-whoops-tripped-over-a-chair-again kind of footsteps.
Ducking behind some chairs, the stack of kitchenware set back onto the table, the trio waited for whoever was coming.
The footsteps came nearer and nearer, the person obviously trying to be silent but failing miserably as said persons footsteps were echoing quite loudly against the floor, the sole of the shoes slapping against the floorboards, and occasionally tripping and stumbling over objects. The mysterious person was definitely causing more of a racket than Erwin, who suddenly felt like making friends.
"This person's even more clumsy than blondie." muttered Hanji who had finally pulled the sponge out of the mouth and now huddled against the kitchen counter next to Levi. For the first time ever, Levi could only agree.
And the scientist was proven right when "Clumsier than Erwin mysterious person" tip-toed into the kitchen, the floorboards creaking under the persons weight, managed to trip over the sponge which lay defeated and rather worn out on the floor after it's wonderful meeting of Hanji's mouth, crash forward into a table which knocked over a chair that knocked over a whole row of stacked-up chairs that knocked over a broom that knocked over a vase that rolled happily all the way across the kitchen counter and knocked over the mountain of pots and pans that Levi had left stacked there. Whoops.
"AAAARAGGHHHHHHHH!" yelled the three people who had been hiding behind the kitchen counter as metal rained onto them, clanging and banging cheerily everywhere, making a loud racket that surely would have woken up anyone within a ten-mile radius.
"INTRUDERS!" hollered "Clumsier than Erwin mysterious person who had just doomed them all" and was cut off by a very pissed-off Hanji who obviously did not appreciate having pots banging her head at all when she rammed her fist into the light switch which flickered on and... lo and behold, there stood a very shocked, guilty-looking Mike who was holding a duster in order to defend himself.
(Levi mentally face-palmed at that. Of all the murderous, gleaming butcher knives in the kitchen, that could slice open flesh like butter, Mike had chosen a duster. A duster. Really?)
"MIKE?" yelled Hanji at a deafening volume, as if the crashing pots hadn't been enough noise.
"HANJI?" Mike yelled back twice as loudly.
Both Erwin and Levi's heads popped up from behind the counter in unison.
"MIKE?!" Erwin hollered at a higher volume than both combined, joining into the "Let's ruin the higher ups sleep by yelling as loud as we can" club.
"Mike." Levi repeated flatly, a neutral expression of pure calmness on his face contrasting to the three other people in the room, "His name is Mike."
"INTRUDERS!" yelled a chorus of voices joined in, belonging to a rather weary looking bunch of bleary-eyed, sleepy soldiers pointing guns and a lot of other rather lethal pointy items (with the exception of one who was holding a pair of fluffy pink bunny slippers) at the four culprits in the kitchen "FREEZE!"
More footsteps sounded and the crowd of soldiers parted for the one and only commander of the glorious Survey Corps, Keith Shadis. Who was frowning at them like they had started spouting feathers and had grown a few more limbs.
"Soldiers," began the the commander, pausing to no doubt intimidate them into squealing like idiots and confess with silence. And so they all waited for him to continue speaking while he waited for them to start squealing and all in all, it was surely a very amusing site, what with Erwin have a silent staring contest with the commander, Mike looking guilty while his nose twitched restlessly, Levi engaging into another staring contest with the other soldiers, which he was winning easily with his flawless poker face, and Hanji-
CRUNCH
"Hanji," Levi deadpanned "What the hell are you doing?"
All heads snapped to look at the brunette who was happily munching on a cookie, oblivious to the people staring at her.
"W-w-what... just what do you think you are doing?" stuttered a very shocked Shadis, abandoning his intimidation (not that it worked anyways) plan.
"Huh?" asked Hanji, stopping her om nom nom on the poor biscuit in favor of staring confusedly at the commander, "I was just feeling hungry, sir, so I decided to eat a cookie, sir."
Shadis spluttered, obviously trying to wrap his head around the weird antics of Hanji, and Levi, who had long gotten used to them, settled for observing calmly from where he stood, the humanly impossible shades of color Shadis's face turned which defied at least several laws of human blood and color.
And of course, Hanji, being Hanji, had a knack for creating the most impossible situations and then landing them in even deeper shit.
"Why is your face trying to imitate a tomato, sir?" she asked, tilting her head in confusion with a look of pure innocence (yeah right, Levi thought darkly, like hell was Hanji innocent) "Are you constipated, sir? You look constipated."
"Y...y...you...y..." spluttered Shadis intelligently, and Levi, being the only sane person in there decided to help the poor man.
"Give him a cookie, Hanji," he commented helpfully. "It helps with the constipation."
In front, Erwin turn around to give him his "What the hell, Levi" look that he reserved for every time Levi did something like turning on all the taps and flooding the entire headquarters ("What?," Levi justified in his defence, "The whole place was filthy anyway!") which Levi promptly ignored because Erwin was an uptight bastard with no sense of humor and a fifteen-metre titan pole up his ass.
Hanji turned and peered into the cookie jar then turned back to face the commander with a frown on her face. "There are no more cookies, sir," she reported with a pout, "Here."
Breaking off a small piece of the cookie, she held it out reluctantly like it was the answer to making friends with titans. "You can have half, sir."
Shadis stared at the cookie, and then raise his head to look at Hanji, then back at the cookie.
There was a very long period of silence in which everyone fidgeted nervously (except Hanji and Levi) and Shadis stared.
He stared some more.
And then he exploded. "THAT'S NOT EVEN HALF NOT EVEN A QUARTER YOU IDIOT!"
Year 847, Training Corps
Shadis leaned against the window sill and watched as a lone figure jogged, or more like pathetically dragged her feet behind her, through the dark, panting.
"Are you sure about this, sir?" asked a subordinate behind him cautiously. "That girl looks about ready to faint."
Shadis let out a growl in his throat that scared the man into backing away a few steps and turned around, eyes flashing menacingly. "Nobody, nobody, eats during training no matter how hungry they are. Nobody."
With that said, he then went right back to watching the new girl, one of those brats from the 104th, Sasha Braus, run punishment laps.
"Although..." he added quietly when the other had ran off and he was alone in the room, letting the slightest hint of a smile grace his lips, as he reminisced on times before, times when he was still the commander of the Survey Corps and had to deal with an odd but special trio with different gifts and personalities and always frustrated him to no end. "She reminded me of someone else, from a long, long time ago..."