As he tore through them, one by one, piece by piece, his mind still held the mental image of Armin. Panicked face, wide eyes, reaching out to grab him before the two walls of teeth snapped shut around his arm and sent him plummeting down the titan's gullet.
Bastards… fucking monsters…
He knew he was dying, and this must have been a last dream. It was a glorious one at that; he was as large as any of them, quicker and stronger as well. Rage led him to stampede through titan after titan, punching, biting, kicking, doing anything he could to dismember them to the point of no return.
And he could still see Armin's face.
He regretted then, leading his friend into this. Mikasa was more than capable of handling herself in situations like this, but Armin had only joined them in enlisting to remain with the only two friends he had ever known. Who knew if he had escaped after the titan had swallowed Eren? It was surely possible, the district was so overrun, even those soldiers with vertical maneuvering gear could be snuffed within an instant. That was why, as he lived this realistic dream, this final slice of ecstasy and carnage, he made sure to crush every titan his mind generated.
I thought… I thought I could kill them. Make a difference.
How stupid he had been. Jean very well may have been right the whole time. Was it worth trying to score victories against the abominations when there really was no hope to be found in doing so? Was it better just trying to preserve one's self and live as good a life as you could with the time you had? As these questions slithered through the remnants of his consciousness, Armin's face dissolved and became that of his mother's, reaching for him one last time, crying and screaming.
The next titan's head he hit exploded from the force his fist exerted.
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
The titan's hand smashed into the building's roof with enough force that, when it missed Janice's nimble form completely, the mere motion of it pulling its hand free of the crater it had made sent debris flying dangerously in every direction. Her previous blades having been shattered by the act of driving them into the roof to slow herself down enough to not go flying into the numerous seven-meter classes below, she drew a fresh pair and settled herself in a readied stance. Deceptively slow, it pulled its gruesome head back and turned to regard her with empty eyes; ignoring the screams, cannonfire, and sounds of collapsing architecture that seemed to come from every side, Janice watched the monstrosity, unblinking.
"Move, then."
Its other arm came whipping to pummel the entire untouched section of the roof, but by the time its arm had laid the area to ruin, she was already gone. The titan didn't even have time to try and reassess her location before her blades carved it into a subdued hulk. Touching down on top of its body as it came to rest on the ground with a thunderous crash, she blew a strand of hair from her eye and looked around, trying to quell the incredible rush that she had been feeling for the better part of the day,
The district was in chaos, and she would have been amazed if it had been in anything less. She hadn't seen the Colossal type as had been the information relayed by many a screaming and panicked cadet, one of whom she had decked for failing to speak clearly, but the fresh gaping hole through which titans seemed to be pouring was more than enough reason for her to believe these reports. Janice's heart had started pounding with the rest of those in that moment, but hers didn't beat with the terror that surely ran with her all her fellow soldiers; hers began to thunder with anticipation.
Finally.
As her final spot during placement had been sixteen, she had known she would be called upon to remain and watch over evacuation with the rest of the most skilled trainees; she would rather be shot for treason then be stuck alongside Ackerman and the other stick-in-the-mud elites. By purposefully hiding out during roll call, she had slipped in one of the obvious titan fodder teams, whose jobs were to distract and kill titans while evacuation of the district was carried out.
Distract, nothing.
This had been the fourth titan she had brought down and her logistical side already knew this was bad; the heightened rush she felt for dragging her blades through the nape of a titan's neck was the closest she had come to experiencing ecstasy in her entire life.
It WAS ecstasy.
Booming footsteps caused her to turn from the nearby roof she had touched down upon; another hulking brute was plodding its way towards her, making its way slowly down the empty street. She took note of the shortness of its arms and legs which, conjoined with its long torso, allowed for a good deal of safety while engaging it. Giving her blades a quick glance to pass them for combat-ready, she slowly began walking along the rooftop towards it.
"CADET!"
The single word was barked as a garrison captain shot by, stopping on a tower to shout at her.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING SO FAR FROM THE BREACH?! THESE TITANS ARE OF THE LEAST CONCERN, THEY HARDLY POSE A THREAT COMPARED TO THE ONES HEADING TOWARDS THE EVAC SITE!"
He was indeed right, but Janice had no intention of letting anyone tell her she couldn't have this; she had been waiting years for this opportunity. Ignoring his words, she continued walking towards the titan and it towards her; he bellowed something else at her that could have been a threat, but she again paid him no mind and, with a curse, he shot off.
She placed her sole focus on the titan now, and took deep breaths to steady herself, not from fear or panic, but from deep rooted anticipation. The moment it came close enough to reach for her, she kicked off; this time, she would try more than simply killing it.
How much can you take… ?
Her blades pulled through the meat of its shoulder like butter, and she nearly gasped with the feeling of the blood that spouted from the wound to splatter her upper body. It was hot, almost to the point of being agonizing, but it began to immediately evaporate as she shot away past its neck. A new wave of excitement ran through her gut as she realized how free she was to do to this titan whatever she wanted. It was a freedom she hadn't been prepared to be confronted with, but it was a freedom that she was more than ready to accept.
A minute or so passed before Janice found herself nearly out of things to slice at; she latched her tethers to the side of a church steeple, breathing heavily and feeling the weight of the blood that had thoroughly soaked her clothes.
Yes… yes…
The titan lay in more pieces than she could count, chunks of its arms and upper body lay scattered along the neighboring rooftops. The rest of it littered the streets below, piece of a leg there, bits of its guts there, a chunk of its jaw there. At some point, her blades had slashed its nape and it had ceased its regenerating; as she wiped her brow, she doubted that even that ability would have saved her.
"JAN!"
Hearing her nickname, the roaring of blood in her ears died by a tremendous amount and she jerkily moved her head to face where the voice had come from. Cedric had just finished making his way over the roofs that separated them and touched down just next to her. He looked both shaken and relieved.
"Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you?! I found everyone else in our squad who made it, but no one had seen you, no one had heard you sound off during roll call, I had to ask a hundred different officers until I found one who had said that he had seen someone who looked like you off by herself after she had defied orders. I got permission as quick as I could to… "
He stopped talking abruptly and she looked to him. His gaze was flicking between her and the remnants of the titan as quickly as a hummingbird between flowers, and she slowly watched his relieved look darken in worry.
"What happened?"
Swallowing, she gestured ahead of her and then raised her blades tellingly, but found she couldn't speak. Her heart was still racing with all the fury that she had pent up inside of her and it was all she could to keep herself from jetting off to find another titan.
"What are you doing out here?"
Careful accusation had slipped into his voice, and Janice felt herself start to scowl.
Who the fuck do you think you are, trying to judge me? You have no goddamn idea what I've lost, why I chose to enlist, I could give less of a shit what you think about…
"You came out here for you, didn't you? No one ordered you to… "
"So what?"
She didn't let any of the derision she was feeling drop into her voice, but her response was curt and emotionless, enough to cause him to recoil gently.
"Jan, you're one of us. We've been overseeing evac and luring away titans for hours and you… what the HELL are you doing out here?"
Not even bothering to look at him, she continued to stare down at the monster she had dispatched, feeling the rush she had felt begin to slide away.
"Why do you care?"
He came as close as he she had ever heard to sounding angry.
"You're my friend!"
Friend, right.
Janice was well aware that she had no friends, and she didn't want any as was; Cedric, in true form, was letting his emotions dictate his words and his actions. She hated that.
"You didn't come to find me because of that."
"Not just, no. You're the best in our squad."
Another obnoxious factor that had been imposed on her: being forced to pair with the incapables who had no business being in the military, let alone graduating.
Why are people so eager to die for something they don't understand?
Cedric rambled on, voice starting to grow somewhat desperate as she didn't so much as pay him a single glance.
"We NEED you back there. THEY needed you back there… "
He drifted off and she cast an annoyed glance at him.
"What are you talking about?"
For several seconds, he didn't reply, and she thought he wasn't going to. Then, he looked at her with the same eyes a child gives a parent when they felt they had been unjustly punished.
"Maya, Peter and Otto are dead."
Her breath caught in her throat and her brow furrowed. The five words he had spoken froze her to the core; the steaming blood that covered her body did nothing to stop this, as a chill ran through her body.
"What?"
It became his turn to look away as she stared at the side of his head.
"We… Peter saw Eren take his squad and push right at the first line of titans from the side we were covering. He tried leading the rest of us along with them, but… they all were killed and I had to take command after Peter got bit out of the air by an aberrant."
"Eren's squad is… gone?"
"Every member, save for Arlert."
"How did… how was that shrimp the only… "
She spoke of Armin, but her mind was fixated only on Eren. Janice had been watching him since the first day she had saw him square up against Jean, gushing about his desire to take back land from the titans, and lead humanity to victory. She had scoffed silently at his dramatic words and the awed looks the more impressionable cadets gave his speeches, but months later, she had found herself finding his resolve… endearing. He wasn't like the fresh recruits, filled with an angry fire that died within weeks before they quietly departed the ranks of their fellow trainees. Eren's fire seemed to be everlasting, and so bright that everything he put his heart into could be conquered; that determination was something she realized she admired, even if his overly emotional approach was something she found personally deplorable. And now… during the 104th's first encounter with titans, he was dead. He, his squad, and half of Janice's own.
"You were our best titan combatant, so we had to make do to keep the evacuation alive. Even with us airing on the side of caution, Maya and Otto both went down after only minutes."
To her surprise, he turned away and made to depart.
"Not that you would care."
And with the familiar burst of compressed gas, Cedric was gone, back over the buildings without even a glance behind her. Janice took a moment to look down at her blades which had dulled significantly, before ejecting them and listening to them clatter against the street below. She realized her gas had significantly depleted as well, and it struck her that she hadn't a clue how long she had been there.
They died… because… because I finally got what I wanted.
As she stared blankly at the half-disintegrated remains below her, she wondered what it was she had wanted in the first place.
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Eren is dead.
The words continued to slam against Mikasa's mind, but something was keeping them from registering.
Eren is dead.
The handles of her blades felt foreign in her hands and the weight of her gear felt as though it had tripled; the very sky itself seemed to be pressing its immense weight on her shoulders.
Eren is dead.
She heard the words she spoke as she reprimanded her fellow cadets, cursing them for cowards and wanting to say even worse. She felt herself draw a pair of blades and turn heel, breaking into a sprint before the precious supply of gas she still had left launched her back over the bloodied streets. The world raced by, fleeting and infinite.
Eren is dead.
She felt the tension of the handles against her palms as she sliced away at the titans that tried to impede her progress and she felt the cold wind against her face. But none of these things seemed to matter.
Eren is dead.
She heard someone shouting her name, telling her she was using too much gas, but it didn't matter. Mikasa knew that there was no point in trying to survive, there was not point trying to go on without him.
Eren is dead.
A titan lunged for her legs from a leveled rooftop, and she twisted around, carving its nape. On and on she went, not sure at all of her direction. Her comrades surely were filled with hope as they drew nearer and nearer to the destination that they thought would grant them salvation, if only momentarily. Mikasa couldn't have cared less by that point, no matter where she went, where she could have gone, nothing would grant her salvation of her own.
The gas emitting from her gear gave a final loud hiss before emptying and sending her plummeting. Armin screamed something, but she paid it no mind. Nothing mattered anymore, after all.