THWACK

A slice of simulated titan flesh flew into the air, nearly hitting Jean in the face.

"God, watch where you're going!" Jean barely dodged another slice.

Levi stopped just long enough to say "How about you try keeping up, Kirstein?" before zipping back between two trees and charging for another set of mock giants. This was pointless, a waste of his time and talent. He should be in there, with that Military Police idiot, making sure she didn't screw everything up any more than she already had. Instead, Hanji had sent him outside to do the equivalent of busywork with two kids who didn't have the first clue about what they were doing.

That wasn't entirely true. Ackerman – Mikasa – was incredibly talented, maybe even more talented than Levi himself. She was also reckless, impulsive, and obsessed with protecting Yeager, so she didn't really hold a candle to his detached prowess. Kirstein was fast, but not fast enough. He handled maneuver gear well enough, but he wasn't flawless.

"Heichou, aren't you supposed to be teaching us?" Mikasa hung in front of him, forcing him to stop before he slammed both of them into a tree. "I need to learn how to spin like you did on our last mission."

"Then practice it." He went to swing past her, but she put out a sword.

"I need to see you do it. As soon as you explain it to me, I'll do it."

"You saw it on the last mission."

"You were too fast, I couldn't – " Levi zipped past Mikasa, dispatching six mock titans in one smooth movement. She scowled. "Why do I even try?"

Jean swung over next to her. "I don't know. He's impossible. I don't know what Commander Hanji was thinking, sending us out here with him." He glared at the diminishing figure toward the horizon. "He's never going to teach us anything. We might as well be asking a statue for help."

Mikasa perched on a tree branch, studying Levi intently. "I'm worried about Eren."

"Of course you are." Jean groaned. "You're just as bad as he is sometimes."

"You have to know that's the reason we were sent out here." Mikasa didn't bother turning over to Jean. "Hanji thinks we'll interfere with the new officer's interactions with Eren. Didn't you hear her and Captain Levi arguing?"

"Unlike you, I don't spend every waking minute keeping tabs on Yeager's every move." Jean stretched and yawned. "This is pointless. I'm going back."

"Don't even think about it." Jean nearly fell off the tree branch, startled by Levi's voice behind him. "Hanji's wasting my time training you two. You aren't getting out of this. Now go kill a titan or something."

What an insipid job. If these two were going to get eaten, there was nothing he could do. Their last mission had made that painfully apparent. No matter how good they were or how much he trained them, it was just a matter of time before they disappeared like everyone else.

He realized that Mikasa hadn't moved. "Ackerman! Are you deaf? I told you to go kill one of those fake-ass titans!"

"I'm waiting to be taught how to spin." She maintained a calm expression, seemingly nonplussed by his demands. "You moved fast enough that Annie couldn't harden her skin in time. I should know how to do that."

"You don't need to know how to do that." Levi hung from the branches, his feet planted against the trunk. "It's not something that I can teach you."

"You don't want to teach me." Mikasa prepared to jump. "I'm more worried about Eren than you are, so I'd suggest you pull it together before you do something stupid."

Levi was almost in shock as she leaped from the branch and attempted to spin into one of the wooden training models up ahead. She slipped a little on the landing, but she was getting there. What he couldn't believe is that she would speak out of turn to him like that. In retrospect, it wasn't like he hadn't had it happen before – she had called him out for not protecting Eren during the mission to capture the female titan – but the fact that she'd assume he was as worried about Jaeger instead of angry at the intrusion Montgomery brought was unsettling. He wasn't attached to the kid. He repeated again in his head. He couldn't get attached to the new recruits, no matter how protective he felt of them. After all, Mikasa's overprotective attitude is what nearly got her killed the last time.


Armin tried not to stare at the birdlike figure of Montgomery Heichou. She was smaller than Levi Heichou and built like Christa – lean and reminiscent of spun glass. However, the look in her ice-blue eyes was anything but fragile as she studied Eren intently.

"... is there anything I can do for you, Heichou?" Eren asked, clearly uncomfortable under her probing stare.

"You have beautiful eyes, Yeager." She was so intent, Armin was sure it was sincere. "They're so... green. Your parents must have been very happy with you."

"Um, thank you?" Eren pulled his arms around his chest. "... are my eyes important to what you're trying to do?"

"I believe you can learn a lot about a person by looking at their eyes." Lydia took a deep breath, finally giving them a break from her examination. "You can understand motivations, the deepest reasons for their actions."

She shifted from the balls of her feet to sitting crosslegged on the bench. "I'm here to help you control your transformation into your titan form. You showed a remarkable amount of control for a while the last time you fought, but you've transformed accidentally too often for Central to ignore."

"So you're my therapist?" Judging by how confused Armin felt, Eren was probably completely lost. He wasn't sure if Montgomery was being ambiguous on purpose or if she just assumed they would follow her thought process.

Heichou scoffed. "Hardly. I'm a behavioral analyst from the Military Police. Yeager, it was either this or the firing squad. My job is to figure out what makes you tick and figure out how to start and stop it on command."

Well, that sounded a lot more menacing. "Will it hurt?" Eren interjected. "The experiments you're going to do, I mean."

"God, Yeager, you're really as dense as they told me." Heichou looked away from him and at her fingernails. "Commander Hanji is the one who does physical titan experiments. I really don't give a shit about what you turn into. It's going to frustrate you, that's for sure – you're such an external person, I doubt you know that much about what's going on in here." She tapped Eren's head lightly and he jerked back. "Here's what's going to happen. We're going to go to the basement every day, and starting with physical awareness I'm going to teach you self-control. It'll make you a better fighter."

She turned around, still speaking. "And since Hanji is your new commander, I'm pulling another new recruit up here for help." She turned to Armin. "What's your name, Aryan babydoll?"

"Armin?" Eren asked before Armin could even answer. "Won't that be dangerous? I don't want to hurt him."

Heichou turned back to Eren. "If we're going to get along, there is something I need you to remember."

"What?"

"I am always in control of the situation."

Armin didn't doubt her. She was so meticulous in appearance and in the way she revealed information that it was clear she had a goal in mind, although apparently she wasn't interested in sharing that information with him. This would prove an interesting experience.