These characters are under copyright by Hajime Isayama and/or Kodansha Comics or others. This is a work of fanfiction, for no monetary gain.
Chapter 2 – Deadly Miracle
Captain Levi stared as an entire horde of Titans appeared over the horizon, from behind the small rise before the relatively distant forest. He counted three dozen, all different types and sizes, including Aberrants, running in the same direction, though at varying speeds, a concentrated mass of destruction heading directly towards his Squad's position. It was clear they would overwhelm and obliterate the right flank, if not the entire formation.
"Bauer, red! Morgan, orange! Gianapolis, yellow!" he barked, even as he loaded a blue smoke grenade into his own pistol. The four of them fired almost simultaneously, warning the rest of the formation of the approaching danger, futile as that warning was. He'd never seen so many Titans attack at once outside the Wall, and inconceivably, the way they moved in concert, it was almost as if they were in a formation of their own.
Levi instinctively scanned the rest of the Survey Corps formation he had viewed only moments before, and his blood ran cold, as he saw almost identical signals flaring up from the forward and rear positions, as well as the left flank. For a moment he was frozen, motionless. They were facing multiple foes at every position. We're surrounded.
Erwin's normally brilliant strategy of the flexible formation had been effectively counteracted. Instead of safely diverting their troops to avoid Titans before they attacked, they would be charging toward their own center from all sides. The Titans were herding them together to slaughter!
With training and plans made worthless, instinct bred of years of surviving in the Underground as a hunted thief surged to the fore: never be cornered; always have a bolt hole, an escape route. If the door's blocked, go through the window, or blow through the wall. If you can't run, attack, fight.
Fortunately the others hadn't begun their retreat yet either, too stunned by what they were seeing. "Hold your position and fire green smoke! We're going to attack! We can't let them herd us!" Levi sharply ordered his Squad, cold steel in his voice, readying his own grenade and watching to make sure the others followed his insane order, grimly pleased to see three green smoke trails join his own in the sky overhead.
He knew full well what he was truly asking of them, against these odds, four men, each against at least nine Titans: stay and fight until you die, so the rest of the Corps has a chance to live. It didn't matter that this replacement Squad wasn't comprised of the hand-picked experts he was used to working with: they were still Corps members. They wouldn't turn and run. They'd fight, though not as well as his lost Squad would have. They would die just as easily.
Of the four of them, he was the only one who actually had a chance of taking down nine Titans, but the ones they didn't defeat would be added to his own foes. He might well be facing twenty-five, even thirty or more.
He had seconds to relay what little tactics and false hope he could. "They're packed close together, as good as trees or buildings. Use their height to your advantage. Swing off the bigger ones and take out the littler ones first. Thin the numbers!
He braced for battle, inhaling deeply, but in the next second choked out his breath in disbelief. What the hell?
Levi had no idea why over two dozen of the three dozen attacking Titans had suddenly vanished from view, as if the very earth was a single giant Titan that had swallowed them whole. The analogy was actually too disturbing to contemplate. Whatever had eaten them might have a taste for horseflesh or human meat as well. But from the smoke trails he had seen, he was certain his position might now well be the one chance the Corps had of surviving this unexpected nightmare.
Beyond the Titan-swallowing ground was that distant forest of tall trees, unsettlingly similar to the one that had become his former Squad's tomb. Levi had no desire to ever see trees like those again, but they would give them a vital height and maneuverability advantage this open space lacked, as well as afford cover, and the limited potential to hide. Then the first of the Titans reached him, and all thoughts turned to the immediacy of battle.
Moving with the grace and deadly accuracy of a viper, Levi struck again and again, felling foe after foe of varying size with ruthless efficiency. After his fourth kill he heard an anguished scream and looked over in time to see Morgan bitten in two, even as a horrified Gianapolis thundered toward him on horseback, too late to save him. Levi yelled a warning, but Gianapolis was too far away, and too distracted and distraught to hear, too slow to react when the Aberrant lunged. It bit him in two at the waist, miraculously leaving both his galloping horse and lower half unscathed, as the animal bolted safely away with its grizzly burden.
His Squad had just been halved, literally. The errant, appalling thought was enough to startle Levi back into action, just in time to drop both his blades and vault up and over the face of the monster that had been about to eat him. He slid down the knotted, greasy hair, fisting it, twisting his body and swinging, giving him the momentum he needed. When he released his hold, he was near enough to a second Titan that he could grapple onto it. Yanking his blades back into position by the connecting wires, he sliced the neck cleanly. He sprung from it as it fell, onto the disgustingly greasy-haired Titan, the nasty slickness fortunately already having evaporated from his hands.
He dispatched that one as well, as he wondered whether Bauer was still alive, whether anyone else was. Most of the others didn't stand a chance against odds like these. Eren Yeager would be what tipped the balance, if he was still alive, if he hadn't been torn apart, or bitten in half, or stepped on before he could transform. There were certain injuries even he wouldn't be able to regenerate from, although he'd survived being eaten before. With so many opponents, even in his Titan form, the way the other Titans tended to swarm him, eager to devour him, he might well have been chewed to bits.
Levi felt curiously numb as he engaged his next opponent, as he continued to cut a steaming swath through the ranks of the Titans, heedless now of how many he had killed, of anything but the overwhelming need to obliterate the monsters that had taken everything from him, uncaring that he himself might die at any moment. He'd died with Petra and the others of his former Squad. It didn't really matter that his body still lived, that it moved and breathed and ate and rarely, so very rarely, slept. Hange had managed to drug his tea at least five times before he'd realized that was why he slept at all. The knowledge that she couldn't have done it without Erwin's consent and aid had both annoyed and touched him.
His eyes widened as a Titan's grasping arm unexpectedly appeared from below the ground in front of him. What the hell? Since when did these monsters attack from underground? He imbedded his grappling hooks in a fully visible Titan and used his maneuver gear to angle him away, launching from it as he killed it, approaching the partially visible monster from a different angle and safer distance. He had to see where that arm was emerging from.
What the… How in the hell did this get here? Levi stared at the enormous pit, which was roughly square in shape, at least twenty meters deep and twenty meters long on each side, by the look of it. He realized to his astonishment there were two other Titans in the pit, unmoving and steaming, in addition to the one trying to clamber out. That's why two thirds of their attacking force had seemingly vanished!
He dispatched the helpless fifteen meter tall emerging Titan with contemptuous ease, noting the two-meter tall metal spikes that lined the floor past the crumbling wall of the pit with interest. There were what appeared to be rotting wooden planks set haphazardly within the pit too, partially covered by clumps of dirt and grass, the piles of sod at least a meter deep in places, and he realized a wooden ceiling must have concealed the pit, until the weight of one or more of the Titans had collapsed it.
A Titan trap? Who the hell had thought to dig something like this? Who had the manpower and the safety to construct a trap this size, for the very monsters that would prevent such a thing from ever being built?
He used his grapples to swing up onto an approaching fifteen meter Titan, momentarily hitching a ride upon it, just before jumping free and killing it, having scanned the surrounding terrain from his elevated view upon the monster's shoulder and spotting what he'd been looking for: there was another dark square further to the right. From what he had observed earlier, the number of their foe vanishing, at such distances from each other, there must be an entire field of these pits.
Surely this couldn't have been part of the Titans' plan? They had somehow known the Corps was coming here, in time to strategize and set up a seemingly well thought out ambush, but they apparently hadn't known about the pits either, or they would have chosen a different location for their attack, or even herded the Corps onto the roofs of the pits, so that their own horses and wagons would have triggered the traps with their weight and plummeted down. It was blind luck their own formation hadn't crossed over the field of pit traps. Did the Titans have another effective enemy besides the Corps? Interesting.
It was at least twenty minutes later, heading to what he thought was the fifth pit, that he made his fatal mistake. Levi had just grappled and swung onto the back of an obscenely swaying and running fifteen meter tall Titan, both swords swinging downwards for the death blow, when the seemingly solid grass-covered ground suddenly gave way beneath the monster's feet and it plunged downwards, the resultant unexpected lurch jerking Levi like a fish caught on a line and slamming him against the shoulder blade of the monster. Darkness swallowed him as they both fell.
