"Hurry up, Eren!" shouts Mikasa as she zips through the tree line on her ODM gear. "We only have three minutes to finish the course!"
Eren curses as he fires another line and uses more gas to propel himself to Mikasa's position almost twenty feet in front of him. This entire exercise feels impossible and like something straight out of an insane man's mind; considering it was Levi who came up with it, he is not too far off. The point is to travel the distance from Wall Maria to Eren's former house in under two hours, killing as many Titans as possible while staying alive. This is the fourth day of the exercise, and so far, they are no closer to beating it than they were on the first.
"How many Titans left?" he calls when they are parallel.
"Fifty-seven!" she replies before cutting into the fake one in their path. "Fifty-six!"
Eren fires off more gas, determination shining in his eyes. He knows he is about a half mile away from where his house is in this course and a rough idea as to where the Titans are. He just wants this to end. They have been stuck in this exercise for days on end, and each time they perform it, they seem to do worse and worse. This time, they have a chance to finally succeed, and he is going to be the one to do it. He glides past Mikasa just as she comes in contact with another Titan dummy. She looks up at him and sighs, she knows exactly where this is going and it is not going to end well.
Eren flies through the air, quickly evading the Titan dummies and flying past his other comrades as they fight through the horde. He smiles when he catches sight of the target and uses the last of his gas to propel himself forward. With a flip, he lands in front of the wooden door of the house Levi uses as a stand-in for the real thing and touches it.
"I did it!" he declares loudly and smugly. Behind him, he can hear his friends cheering, and moments later, Levi and Hanji propel in. He turns to them, a self-satisfied grin on his face, and is about to declare the exercise a success when Levi punches him squarely in the gut, causing him to go to his knees, the wind knocked out of his lungs.
"What the hell was that for?!" demands Jean as he, Armin, Mikasa, Connie, Historia, and Sasha land behind Eren. "He completed the course."
"He blatantly disregarded it!" says Levi angrily. Eren does not think he has ever seen the Captain so upset before. Levi's eyes find Mikasa's. "What the fuck did you say to him?"
Mikasa, who is being held back by Armin and Sasha, wastes no time in replying in the nastiest tone she can manage, "I told him we had three minutes left."
Levi rolls his eyes and hits Eren over the head. "You idiot! How many times do I have to fucking tell you to stop fixating on the time?! I give you the limit of a best-case scenario, not the overall expedition!" He shakes his head. "Well, I can't say I'm shocked that you failed. None of you shitheads has demonstrated any competence during this exercise."
This hits them harder than if Levi just decided to sucker punch them in the gut like he did Eren.
"We're not incompetent!" cries Jean, taking a step towards Levi. "We're trying our best to do this course, but you're the one with impossible standards! What Eren did was legitimate, it ended the exercise within the time given."
Levi looks as if he is ready to burn down the world and everyone in it. "This isn't a goddamn exercise! This is real! When we go to Wall Maria, this is what we should expect to encounter. If Eren pulled that stunt in the middle of the expedition, all of you would be dead and so would he! He used the last bit of his gas to get here and didn't even think to save any for the trip home." Levi gestures behind him at the abandoned village and forest. "This is just the first half of the fucking expedition; we haven't even gotten to the second half, which is to return to the top of the Wall unharmed and alive with the information!"
"Levi," says Hanji slowly, as if approaching an angry beast. "Levi, you're being too hard on them, they don't understand—"
"Damn right they don't," snaps Levi. "They don't stick to the formation, they don't make survival a priority, and they're too busy trying to protect themselves or others to do anything else." His eyes rest heavily on Mikasa. "The exercise is on hold until the seven of you can demonstrate that you aren't a bunch of incompetent cowards."
They all open their mouths to protest, but Levi holds up his hand. "I'm not in the mood to listen to whining, so save it for someone else. Report back to the base by sundown, I'll see you then."
He then uses his ODM gear to head back towards their base without so much as looking back at them.
"Where does he get off?" demands Connie, looking at Hanji who flinches. "We've been doing this stupid training ever since we got back from Wall Sina and all he ever does is criticize us. Doesn't he understand that we're trying?"
Hanji fidgets with her goggles as she tries to come up with some explanation for Levi's erratic and rather unbecoming behavior. She knew he was tough on his old squad and Eren to a certain degree, but she never saw anything like this. "I'm not sure," she says slowly, knowing that one false step with the cadets would likely lead to a mutiny or worse. "I know he's under extreme pressure from Command and Erwin to ensure that this expedition is a success, but I've never heard of him prioritizing a expedition's success over his squad."
"That doesn't explain all these drills and exercises and continually going over the plan," interjects Armin carefully. "It's not like we're going in there alone."
Hanji looks at the ground, staring at anything that is not the cadets.
"You mean . . . we won't have any backup?" asks Sasha quietly.
The Titan enthusiast nods. "Levi was going to get to this once he was sure you could handle yourselves, but I guess you should know that the nine of us are all that's going into the district. We'll have an escort going into Wall Maria, but the Scouts can't afford another expedition with mass casualties; so Erwin's decided that a smaller squad will have a better chance of retrieving the information and making it back." She looks down at Eren, who is now recovered from his earlier punch. "I'm sorry, I'm sure that's the last thing you wanted to hear."
Eren calmly meets her gaze. He can hardly say he is surprised by this turn of events, but it still hurts to hear. The squad is small because of all the people who needlessly lost their lives protecting him or coming to save him. This entire situation is his fault. His hand drifts up to the key laying against his sternum, warm from being against his skin. No, this is the Titans' fault; it's Reiner and Bertoldt's and Annie's fault. They started this war, and now he and Levi and the others are going to end it.
"You're right," he says as he stands up, a little shaky but he manages. "I didn't want to hear that, but I needed to. We all needed to hear that." He turns back to his comrades. "We have a choice to make right here and now. Do we follow Captain Levi or do we leave him high and dry? Do we save humanity or watch it fall to the enemy? We need to decide what we want to do and what kind of soldiers we want to be because if we don't, no one is going to win in this war except the Titans and I'll be damned before I let that happen."
He looks at his friends, his comrades, the people he would gladly give his life for and watches as one by one their faces reflect their souls, and he knows the choice they made. With a smile he extends his fist, and Mikasa does the same, touching hers to his, Armin follows suit followed by Jean and Hanji, Sasha is next and then Connie, Historia is the last after a few moments of hesitation, but Eren knew she would stand with the rest. She cared for humanity as much as the rest of them, and she would not let them down when the time came. None of them would.
The base is quiet when Levi enters the dining hall. The cadets are either in their rooms or still out with Hanji; he decides as he sits down at the wooden table where just a few months ago he and his original squad sat with Eren during those early days. He sits at the lower end of the table and stares at the empty seats. He can easily see Petra, Eld, Oluo, and Gunther sitting in those empty chairs. Petra would be sitting across from Oluo, getting on to him for his attitude or something he said while Gunther pestered Eld about recent kills and how they all compared to each other now. The man was always obsessed with statistics and regularly insisted on updating their records to reflect their achievements.
Levi rests his head in his hands, tearing his eyes away from the painful memory. They're all dead because of this stupid war, because of stupid Annie and Reiner and Bertoldt. They died because he failed to make the right decisions. Now history will repeat itself with this new squad, with Humanity's Squad, and he feels helpless.
He understands that he is pushing too hard and expecting them to understand everything he does when he has yet to explain anything. Levi can feel his emotions clouding his mind and creeping into his confidence. He is starting to lose his edge; his fears are beginning to take over and drown out his belief that they will succeed and they will find out how to save humanity from the Titans.
"Captain?" asks a voice and it pulls him from his thoughts. He looks up and sees Eren standing over him with two cups of hot tea in hand.
"Eren," he breathes, barely believing that he is standing there. He looks different somehow, calmer maybe.
Eren gives him a slight smile as he puts one of the cups in front of Levi before going to the other end of the table and sitting in the chair across from him. "I hope it's still hot," he says as he lifts the cup from the saucer. "I'm not sure how long it took me to steep the tea leaves, so it might be cold."
Levi nods as he picks up the porcelain cup by the rim with his fingers. He brings it to his lips and takes a tentative sip. The flavorful dark amber liquid touches his tongue, and he relaxes, it is brewed just the way he likes it, and he is mildly surprised that Eren knew how.
"Where are the others?" he asks as he puts the cup down.
"Their rooms," replies Eren as he looks at the candles burning above before he looks back at Levi. "Hanji smoothed things over with them."
Levi sighs quietly. It's not her job to explain his behavior, especially when he didn't even understand where this is coming from. "I'm sorry," he says, making sure to meet Eren's eyes. "I shouldn't have hit you like I did."
Eren shrugs. "And I shouldn't have tried to cheat the exercise. We were both wrong."
"Don't rationalize it!" snaps Levi, looking away from Eren, his eyes closed and teeth clenched in frustration. "Don't you dare make it okay, because it's not! I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have lost my temper over something you didn't understand."
Eren stares at the man who long ago earned his respect. The man always seems so cool and collected when in the field, but right now he seems broken and afraid. At this moment, Eren realizes that he is not speaking to Humanity's Strongest but Levi, the man underneath the legend.
"I'm not rationalizing it," says Eren quietly. "I'm accepting that I had some part in it. I decided to disobey the rules of the exercise because I was tired of it and I knew the others were too, and I was hoping to end it so we could move on." He looks down at his cup and sees his murky reflection. "We both did things we aren't proud of."
Levi looks up at him, his expression worn and his body sagging. "When did you get so damn mature?"
"I'm not, not really," chuckles Eren, a little awkwardly. "I just . . . I decided that I need to get over my pride and stop thinking about this as all about me. This war is bigger than me and will always be, and if we're going to win then things need to change, and one of those is me feeling sorry for myself. I'm not responsible for all those deaths, I didn't start this war, and I wasn't the cause of the attack." He looks at Levi, who seems intrigued. "They chose to chase after me, I didn't ask for their help, just like Petra, Oluo, Gunther, and Eld chose to fight Annie to save me. I didn't ask for it, but I won't let their choices be made in vain. I'll fight until my dying breath, and even then, I'll fight to breathe and keep fighting."
Levi can hardly believe that this is the same Eren who just a week and a half ago was lamenting how everyone looked at him like something to measure against the lives lost to save him. To say he is impressed is an understatement, to say he is as equally concerned goes without saying. Eren can be reckless, and when he is reckless, he makes terrible choices. He reflects on what Eren said about fighting to his dying breath and then still fighting despite being on death's door. It does not sit well with him; in fact, it almost makes him sick to think about. Levi takes a sip of his tea to calm his stomach and tries not to dwell on why the thought of Eren dying fills him with so much dread.
They're going to need a sound strategy if they are ever going to succeed at Levi's exercise and prove to him that they are capable of completing their expedition. Eren looks at the calendar beside his bed with the date of their expedition circled in black ink. They only have ten days before the expedition, and they are no closer to succeeding than they were when they started.
"What're you thinking about, Eren?" asks Armin as he enters Eren's room. Now that he knows how to control his powers, Eren was granted a room with the others on the second floor rather than being trapped in the basement. Having a room with a view is lovely.
"The exercise," replies Eren as he sits up in bed while Armin sits at the end.
Armin nods. "I've been thinking about it too. I think I have a plan, but I'm not sure about it."
Eren smirks. "That usually means it's pretty good."
"Maybe," says Armin cautiously as he pulls out several folded papers from his pocket. "I've been thinking about what Levi and Hanji said, about not having any backup and the points where we were screwing up."
"You mean how we weren't prioritizing survival, focusing too much on time, getting out of formation and stuff like that?" asks Eren and Armin nods. "What did you come up with?"
"Well, for one thing, we need to ignore Levi's time limit," says Armin and before Eren can protest, he holds up a piece of paper. "I did some calculations; two hours is impossible even in the best of circumstances. What we need to do is focus on meeting each objective to the best of our abilities, not on the time it takes to meet them." He holds up another piece of paper with more arithmetic on it. "Based on recent reports, there are approximately seventy-four Titans at any one time between your old house and the Wall. In this exercise, we've only averaged to kill thirty, and most of those were Mikasa. If we're going to get past even half of those Titans, we're going to need to stick to that formation Levi told us about: Mikasa in the center, behind her Jean on the right and Sasha on the left, followed by Connie on the left and me on the right behind them; with you and Historia in the center rear to make an open arrow. Honestly, it's a sound formation. We could effectively kill seven Titans if all of us managed to kill the ones we encounter."
Eren's eyes widen. He thought the formation was too restrictive, but to hear Armin explain it, there's some truth to it. "What about Levi and Hanji?"
"Hanji is on the left and Levi on the right outside of the formation," explains Armin as he brings down a piece of paper with the formation written out. "There's an unwritten plan in it too." He points at the spot where Eren is in the formation. "In case we get overwhelmed, you can turn into a Titan, and we can scatter. You'll be able to draw the Titans while we get into position to kill them. Then when you go back to normal, we'll protect you while you heal."
"Interesting," says Eren as he looks at the paper. "So the next time we do the exercise, we need to stay in this formation, right?"
Armin nods emphatically. "Absolutely." He then rubs the back of his neck. "We also need to make sure that Mikasa doesn't break away to try and protect you. I know she's worried about you, but it could compromise the expedition's success."
Eren nods his agreement. Armin makes a good point; Mikasa continually deserts the other Scouts in favor of coming to his rescue. If they are going to succeed, she needs to focus on the others instead of him.
"And if we stay in position, then our chances of survival are pretty high," continues Armin as he unfolds another paper. "Of course, we can deviate enough to save ourselves if necessary, but so long as we maintain at least the shape of this in our deviation, we'll be much safer."
"I like where you're going with this plan, Armin," says Eren approvingly.
Armin chuckles. "It's not my plan; it's Captain Levi's. I'm just demonstrating how it works so the next time we run the course, we don't screw up." He then pulls out a slightly detailed map of the course. "I've also been thinking about how we're going to get back because getting to your house is only half the battle." He points at the houses and trees. "We need to be conservative with our gas, we'll each get an extra canister but it would be better if we didn't use it until the final leg. Depending on how much is used, of course, one canister can realistically get us there. If we're conservative, we can make one canister last through one and a half journeys."
Eren nods as he looks at the map. "Then we need to find each strategic position where we should use the gas. Little puffs to get us propelled shouldn't be a problem, right? But those bigger moments should be saved for later and we should try to use our environment as much as possible." He runs a hand through his chestnut brown hair. "Fighting Titans without gas will be difficult, especially if we're going for speed."
Armin sighs. "I know. It's the biggest issue we have. I do have a half plan, which goes along with what you said about using our environment. When we get into town, we'll need to stick to the rooftops and high places, using our hooks to draw us in closer to the Titans when needed."
"That's more than half a plan," Eren teases, but he honestly likes Armin's thinking. "This plan can work, even though we both know that plans usually go to hell in the middle of battle. As long as everyone at least sticks to the basic outline and your suggestions, we should all at least survive."
"And that's what Captain Levi wants the most," says Armin happily. "How did your talk go with him?"
"Good," replies Eren, thinking about earlier when he brought Levi a cup of tea and apologized. "I apologized for cheating and he apologized for hitting me. I think we were both just frustrated with the situation."
Amin smiles. "You know, I think you're the only person here who understands his thinking. I mean Jean thought he was completely unfair and Mikasa was ready to kill him, and Connie thought he was out of line too. I think he terrifies Sasha and Historia, to be honest."
Eren chuckles. "He scared me at first too; he can be a bit intimidating, at least until he starts making you clean."
Armin shudders at the memory of their first night at the base, when Levi forced them to scrub the castle from top to bottom before they could have dinner. Sasha cried the entire time and had to keep redoing her sections to clean up the drool and tears.
"You're the only one who cleans to his standards, Eren," says Armin with a smirk.
"I've just done it before, you'll learn," says Eren with a shrug.
"You know, you're the only one he addresses by name," continues Armin. "He does address Erwin and Hanji by their names, but not the rest of us."
Eren's ears perk up at this observation. "Really? I never noticed."
"I guess you wouldn't agree, what with all the criticism he gives you," laughs Armin as he picks up his notes and the maps. "Anyway, we should probably let the rest of the squad in our this plan, and probably practice it a few times before we show Captain Levi."
"Yeah, I don't think I can handle another one of those punches," says Eren, absentmindedly rubbing the spot where Levi's fist connected.
Armin shrugs. "You've handled worse, and I think he was holding back. I saw what he did at the tribunal, and that was far worse than what you got today."
Eren shrugs as they both get off the bed. "You might be right, but it doesn't matter. I don't think Mikasa will forgive him so easily next time."
"What makes you think she's already forgiven him?"
"He's still alive, isn't he?"