In which, there was a captain with a more than severe obsession with staying clean, a suicidal brat, an idiotic horse-face and a bunch of people who just wanted to stay alive.
Erwin looked up from his seemingly endless stack of stuffy, boring reports on horseshoes to find Levi standing in front of him, scowling. Which was fairly normal, as Levi was always scowling. He somehow managed to find something to scowl about all the time.
"Is there something wrong, Captain?"
"No, but I wanted to talk to you about-" Levi started, but was interrupted by a voice yelling behind him.
"EREN NO! THAT'S SUICIDAL! IT'S JUST A DARE, DON'T DO IT!"
Levi managed to scowl even more and turned, obviously intending to yell at Mikasa for interrupting him only to see a certain suicidal, furious brat barreling towards him.
Eyes narrowed and fists clenched in determination, Eren ran at Levi, ignoring Mikasa's desperate cry of "NOOOOOOO! IF YOU DO IT I'M NOT SAVING YOU!", and threw something at his Captain.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Every single pair of eyes in the room, even Sasha's who was usually indifferent and too busy gobbling food to care, saw Eren's fingers slowly unfurling from his palm, revealing a single speck of dirt resting in the middle.
Which flew through the air, heading straight for Levi, who, despite being Humanity's Strongest and the fastest in the room, was too shocked to dodge.
And thus, that little speck of dirt hit Levi's shoulder and bounced off, leaving a tiny, no, minuscule mark on the shoulder of captain's uniform which only Levi could see. Being the clean freak in the room.
To be honest, calling Levi a clean freak would be a very extreme understatement. Among the hundreds of clean freaks within the walls, Levi was the absolute, irrevocably, undeniably worst of them all.
Every single inch of his uniform had to be spotless, dirt-free, wrinkle-less and perfectly smooth with not even the tiniest cut or scratch anywhere.
His room was practically gleaming from all the times he had scrubbed, mopped and dusted it. Everything in the room, from his clothes to his many files and to even the spare buttons, was colour coded and put in neat rows.
Getting even the slightest bit of mud or dirt within a five-mile radius of the captain's room was basically committing suicide and everyone knew it. Except, apparently for Hanji.
If Hanji wasn't the closest person Levi had for a friend, which she was no matter how many times Levi denied it, she would definitely be dead at least a hundred times over.
Levi had already lost count of how many times he had chased Hanji out of his room, spraying detergent, brandishing a feather duster (a rainbow coloured one Erwin had given to him on his birthday) or even ,more than once, screaming bloody murder at her. He was pretty sure that everyone within thirty miles had heard him screaming, "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM YOU TITAN-OBSESSED SHITTY-GLASSES FREAK! YOU'RE CONTAMINATING IT!" and a lot of other things that most definitely should never be mentioned again, at her.
If he wasn't Humanity's Strongest and equal to at least a hundred men, he would probably been kicked out from the Survey Corps for his choice of ,well, rather vulgar words alone.
Anyway, back to the present.
Levi stared at the barely visible little mark on his shoulder where the speck of dirt had bounced off, and when he looked back up at Eren (yes, looked back UP, he's a midget), his eyes were glowing with rage. The look in them was like Sasha's when told she wouldn't get dinner or Jean's when called a horse-face.
Only... it was about a few thousand times worse.
Eren gulped in fear and slowly backed away, like one would when faced with a snarling, hungry, wild bear or a fifteen-foot human-eating titan. Only Levi was neither... he was much, much worse.
The bear and titan would only eat him and be done with it, but Levi would probably beat him up, wait for him to heal, beat him up again and then make him clean the whole place at least three times completely by his own with nothing but a toothbrush. And a old and ratty one at that.
Levi had made him do it once, after he had managed to get muddy bootprints all over the corridors. Erwin himself had come to tell Eren that it had been nice knowing him and then left, freaking out the poor boy.
Vaguely, he remembered Armin showing him a poster about dealing with wild animals. It said the person should back away slowly, put their hands somewhere visible so the animal wouldn't think said person was trying to attack him, and if possible, throw food at it. He wondered if Levi would back off if he brandished a giant fluffy feather duster and a bottle of detergent in front of him while slowly cleaning up his tracks ad backing out of the room, which he would then proceed to run as though Satan himself was chasing him. Because an angry Levi was definitely more dangerous than Satan.
The mental image of him calming Levi down with a feather duster caused him to giggle. Big mistake. He had just poked the bear in the eye with a stick. And said bear, in the form of a short furious captain, was now, if possible, even more angry than before. Whoops.
He sorely regretted everything he had ever said about the captain's height. As said captain, despite only being 160 cm tall which made him a total of 10 cm shorter than Eren, was now looming over him, surrounded by a dark aura. If someone had told him right then and there that the captain was related to the abominable titan-man, he wouldn't have been surprised.
Suppressing the urge to scream like a baby girl and burst into tears (Levi is just that terrifying), he gulped again and slowly looked up into the face of Satan himself. Anything...anything, even a horde of fifty-meter tall, hungry titans would be preferable to a pissed-off Levi.
Eren quickly braced himself, both mentally and physically, closed his eyes and waited to be beaten into a bloody pulp.
One...
Two...
Three...
Still, no blow came. Had Mikasa decided to save his ass after all?
Nervously, he cracked open his eyes only to find the captain's face inches from his own. With a very girlish (manly! he insisted afterwards) cry that he would never admit to, he jumped back.
Levi spoke in his usual monotone, very calmly, "Why?"
Too calm.
Was the captain giving him a chance to explain? Quickly, Eren blabbered, "It was just a dare and I thought that you would dodge so I didn't mean it and please don't kill me or beat me up it hurt so much last time I swear I didn't really want it was stupid of me!" Eren was suddenly aware that he had clearly spent too much time around Hanji and was now clearly incapable of controlling his own mouth, he tried to stop, but what came out was "and I... I WANT TO LIVEEEEE!"
Silence.
And then..."Who?"
"Horsefac-I m-mean Jean."
Very calmly, the captain grabbed Eren with one hand then turned and walked towards Jean, dragging poor Eren behind him by his collar.
Idiotic blondie horse-face, also known as Jean Kirschtein, stared at his own impending doom walking closer and closer. His mind was in a turmoil: one part of his brain yelling at him to run before he got beaten up, while another was yelling back that if he ran away Levi would catch him and beat him up anyway while the last was still pouting about called a horse-face and whining for attention from a certain girl with beautiful hair.
By the time his brain had reached the decision to run, run as fast and far away as he could, it was already too late. With his free hand, Levi grabbed the dazed blonde by the collar, and despite being shorter than both boys, managed to lift both troublemakers easily, one with each hand.
He wasn't known as Humanity's strongest for nothing after all.
Calmly, Levi dragged both petrified boys out of the room and shut the door quietly with his foot.
A moment later, blood curling screams, running footsteps, multiple whacks and thuds were heard, the sound of an enraged Levi beating up a suicudal brat and an idiotic horse-face.
Everyone in the room suppressed a wince. Ouch.
~Ten minutes later~
When the door opened again, everyone froze and turned towards the doorway, expecting an angry captain to storm in.
Only to see a perfectly calm and composed Levi, everything perfectly in place down to the last strand of hair with no wrinkles, creases or any sign at all that he had just beaten up two idiots.
Everyone parted for Levi like the Red Sea did for Moses, none of them wanting to end up like Eren and Jean.
Levi stopped in front of Erwin's seat.
Erwin raised a majestic sparkly eyebrow. "Yes, captain?"
"So, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, I need to talk to you about the state of this place. It is filthy." Levi stated calmly, as if he hadn't just beaten two boys into bloody pulp just because they got a single speck of dirt on him, "Luckily, I have found two willing volunteers to clean this stinky, despicable, muck-covered place."
Volunteers indeed. More like two little (yes, Erwin is allowed to think of them as little because unlike Levi, he is older than them and looks like it) idiots who you are going to punish by making them clean this whole place.
Of course, there was no way he was saying that aloud.
So Erwin just leaned back in his seat and stroked his eyebrows "Alrighty then."
~Sometime later~
The cool night breeze caressed her cheeks and ruffled her short raven hair.
Mikasa stepped outside and gazed at the night sky, a dark canvas covered in thousands and thousands drops of paint. She wondered where Eren and Jean were. They hadn't returned so she just assumed that they were cleaning under the strict gaze of captain shorty (Mikasa is taller than Levi, hell, almost everyone is taller than him).
After a talk with the commander a few days ago, she had realized that being too overprotective of him would just harm him one day if he never realized the consequences of his actions and learned to control his temper.
Suddenly, she heard two voices arguing in the courtyard. Curious, Mikasa slipped into the shadow of a tall bush and rounded the corner to find...no one.
Yet she could still hear the voices. Now closer, she recognized Eren's voice.
Following his voice, she rounded a tree to find two heads?
Both heads turned in her direction when she gasped. One dark and one blonde. Eren and Jean were buried in the garden up to their necks.
Apparently, the captain had been so mad that they had gotten dirt onto his clothes that he had buried them in it. Revenge was sweet indeed.
Stifling a laugh, Mikasa walked towards them and called out softly "It's me, Mikasa. Need some help there, boys?"
Eren sighed in obvious relief "Thank god you're here, Mikasa! We've been stuck here for who knows how long because no one bothered to look in the garden and I swear there are thousands of bugs and insects here!"
"Oi! Don't you talk to Mikasa like that!"
"Shut it horse-face! I can say whatever I want."
Mikasa groaned and resisted the urge to smash both their skulls together. While Eren's stubbornness was admirable sometimes, right now it was annoying as hell.
Seriously, it was because Eren and Jean always arguing that lead to Jean daring Eren to get the captain dirty. After being beaten up, assigned to clean the whole place and buried up to their necks in soil crawling with insects for more than five hours and they were still arguing?
Some things just never changed.
So Mikasa turned around, lightly calling out over her shoulder "Well good night then. I'll come fetch you tomorrow morning when you two are finally done arguing, I'm too tired to do any digging now. Besides, you both bought this upon yourselves. So don't let the bedbugs bite!"