"PICK UP THE PACE, YOU LEAD HEELED LAGGERS!"
Once again, the batch of yellow bellied, unskilled little worms that had been put under Shadis's command had failed him. The pathetic excuses he had been tossed were falling to the ground with their legs imitating jelly after no more than 10 miles of backpacking. Although, a few of them seemed to be able to handle the great weight on their shoulders. One in particular, a boy no more than 16 with orange blonde hair and a straw hat, actually impressed him. The recruit that looked more accustomed to farming than killing Titans was actually sprinting, the pounds upon pounds of who knew what contained within (*cough* Levi'sTideandfeatherdusters *cough*) the backpack he carried not bothering him in the least. As Shadis continued to watch the boy, who's name he recalled as Finny, laugh as he took the packs of an older, dark pink haired woman, the damned Arlert boy, and almost got Bardruoy's. But damn the man, he was too stubborn to admit how much the thing was slowing him down. And so Finny sped onwards, soon leaving most of the other recruits behind.
Somehow, Arlert had ended up with another bag, probably Connie Springer's, whom Shadis could see pulling a stunt like that. Soon, the Aryan Coconut(SEE WHAT I DID THERE HUH HUH) was slowing down to be the very last of the recruits in line, except for the heavyset, blonde titan of a boy that was Reiner Braun. The boy was an idiot, or so it seemed until he stepped out into his element. The field. By conserving his energy and remembering, unlike most of the morons in front of him, that it wasn't a race they were running but an endurance test, Reiner could easily, well, Shadis wouldn't say win, but be the best at the task in front of him. If it wasn't for Mikasa Ackerman, he'd be the top of the class hands down.
Armin was falling further and further behind. Shadis then decided to give the boy a little encouragement.
"Your boots waterlogged, Arlert?" He yelled through the rain "Let's see some hustle!" He slapped the boy on the back, sending him flopping down into the mud.
If you can't take the pressure, you have to go and pull plants.
Great. Now his hair, his face, and the entire front of his shirt were all caked in brown, permeating mud. Armin didn't want to get up. His legs were burning. His chest felt like there was an icy spear through it, piercing his lungs and making even breathing a Herculean effort for the young man. Armin really hoped that Eren and Mikasa were far enough ahead of him that they wouldn't find him dead and collapsed in the mud, eventually realizing that he had been killed by some silly military hike.
"Really, Arlert?" A cold, concise voice said above him. With what little remaining strength he could muster, Armin looked up to see the familiar face of Ciel. Of course, the navy haired boy was scowling, his eyes hardened, but all the same he held out a hand to the blonde.
"We're supposed to be a team once we're out of here and in the field against Titans, so as much as it pains me, I supposed we should start here," Ciel said acidly. "Don't bother trying to reciprocate a favor. This alone is proof you won't be capable of such a feat."
"You know," Armin replied. " If your going to bother to assist someone there's no need to act despicable towards them afterwards. It sort of renders the favor in and of itself null and void."
Armin could of sworn that his companion smirked.
"Not in the slightest,"Ciel shot back. "It keeps the person at a distance so they won't expect the same kindness again, and will fix the problem themselves like mature human beings the next time it occurs."
"Is that why the only person anyone sees you smile at is Christa?"
"You shut the hell up about that or I will put you back in the mud after I give you my pack."
"Yeah yeah, whatever."
With both packs slung over Ciel's left arm and Armin's right, the problem of weight plus Armin's lacking athleticism was solved.
"I think we've got it!"
"Not yet we don't. We've still got the run. That's what this was about."
Gradually, the two boys continued to pick up speed, leaving Reiner in last place of the multitude of recruits.
"We're going to make it! I'm not going to die in a mud puddle!" Armin's face glowed with happiness at having accomplished something that not too long ago had been unattainable in his world. Unfortunately for Ciel, Armin also seemed keen to whoop with his arms rather than his mouth, which caused the precarious yet successful formation to topple to the ground, staining Ciel's almost perfect and recently painted blue Cadet jacket with mud. Armin noticed no difference in his, already dried mud now buried under a layer that was quite wet.
Shadis still slapped them both senseless when he saw and they explained it to him.
Shadis looked back and saw Reiner Braun, slowly jogging behind almost every other recruits that had been called on this hike, whistling some tune with a small grin on his face. He looked jovial, despite the grueling trip he'd endured. Shadis was almost jealous.
'Mind and constitution of a grass fed ox, that one,' he though as he looked the muscled young man over. 'But respected by his comrades like a General.'
What were the other recruits' names? Oh, yes. There were...
'Eren Yaeger. Lackluster. Couldn't exactly use the damn equipment right, but you can't blame technical errors on the guy that's wearing the tech, can you? Who knows, kid might not even need equipment. With the mindset he's got, one might think he'd be content with a butterknife to stab Titans in the ankles with.
Armin Arlert. Built like a daffodil, and has about as high a voice as a daffodil, too. Academically though, one of the best we have.
Mikasa Ackerman. Nothing short of a perfect performance on her part, in almost all areas. Its not a stretch to says she excels at everything. Nor to say the girl's a bona-fied genius.
Annie Leonhardt. An animal with the sword, but does not use the same pen as the other horses. However, she delivers some of the cleanest cuts I've seen thus far.
Bertolt Hoover. Loads of native talent, but too much of a wimp to not wet himself when a comrade dies. Can't exactly blame him, but being able to piss your pants isn't a skill we need.
Jean Kirschtein. A more insufferable, tempered little smartass of a soldier I've never seen, but uses the ODM Gear like he's riding a bike.
Sasha Braus. Unusually fine instincts, particularly for my imported steak. Doesn't want to share with others for obvious reasons. Who'd want to?
Connie Springer. Almost as much of a smartass as Kirschtein, but thank the Lord he's nowhere near as cunning. Pretty agile on the switchbacks.
Kurt Lange. Still as short as he probably was two years ago, but by far the most fast I've seen, easily surpassing even Mikasa in terms of speed. If it weren't for Ms. Ackerman's exceeding him in most everything else, the kid would be top of the class.
Meyrin Oshrio. Clumsy as hell and in need of glasses repair, however does demonstrate great ability for simultaneous attack and evasion.
Finny Taylor. Requires someone to tell him when he's using complete overkill, otherwise a fine soldier with, it seems, no physical limits.'
Each Cadet delivered just as they had been expected to. The cuts of Annie, Mikasa, Kurt, Reiner, Ymir Engstrom, and Jean were all deep enough that, had the slices of cheap bread attached to wooden cutouts been the napes of real Titans, the giants would have gone down and not gotten back up. However, Armin, Eren, Meyrin, Christa Lenz and Bertolt all cut the bread too shallow. Finny had hit the bread with his blades so hard it went careening into another cutout and bounced off to the ground. Connie missed it altogether, instead carving a gash into the "spinal cord" of the cutout. Sasha had flipped an instant before she would have cut it and ripped it from the cutout with her teeth.
"You gonna chew the Titans to death, Braus?! Step it up!" he yelled to the auburn haired girl.
Christa silently cursed herself for her blunder. If she hadn't been SOOOOO busy ogling at Kurt, his blade passing through the bread like it wasn't in their physical plane, she might have actually hit the food article the exercise demanded she did as deep as was needed. What a way to go, she decided, if one day, she was checking him out for the millionth time or some such nonsense she was bound to do, she swung on her cables right into a Titan's mouth.
'At least my last memory would be my best...Wait, what the hell am I talking about?' Christa bonked herself on the head with the hilt of her blades.
"Ms. Lenz!" the sound of Kurt's voice instantly caught her attention. "Over here!" he called again. Christa turned and saw him coming up on her right, stopping next to her. "How are you?" the navy haired male even smiled, a small, thunderclap of a smile that was there one moment and gone the next. Christa swore she could feel the lightest tinge of pink come over her face. Not that him asking how she was was anything new, but it still gave her some sort of rush, considering(THIS CHANNEL HAS BEEN HACKED BY ENVY. Envy: Now, now, can't let you find out those details that we save for later!*Lifts up skort* Bet you forgot all about what the little brat just said. TATA!)
"O-oh, I'm ok. How about you, Kurt?" she asked him.
"Quite alright," Kurt answered."However, smalltalk isn't the reason I came over here. It's not you that's the cause of the shallow cuts. It's the angle of the blade. And the wind. To start off, show me how you natural hold the thing. Stick out your left arm."
Christa obeyed, and Kurt studied her hand and fingers tediously before saying, "You see the angle? It's slanted enough that the wind, coupled with the force of hitting the bread, make the blade start to turn sideways. At the angle of your ODM Gear's trajectory, the blade begins to lift up and out of the bread because of that. Try it like this."
He shifted her finger to hold the blade a few degrees to the left, perfecting the straight line of the edge that Christa herself had tried to do so many times.
"Now, shall we make some sandwiches?"
He'd definitely smirked that time.
Kurt zoomed off towards the last standing cutout, Christa not far behind him. He shifted his blades to face in opposite directions from his hands and spun, neatly cutting three identical marks into the bread. He turned around, watching her as he yelled, "Keep it as straight as you can! Do that and you've got this!"
'Ok...he says I've got this...don't let him down, Christa!'
Her entire body went completely rigid, and that shaking of the metal in her hands that she felt almost every time they did this bread exercise was gone. One clean stroke later, and she was on the other side of the cutout. Looking behind her, she saw...
A solid, concise cleft between two halves of bread, both nearly identical except for three cuts in the left half.
"I...KURT! I DID IT! I REALLY DID IT!"
"Christa! Move!"
Only then did Christa recover enough from her afterglow to realize that the rigidness of her body had not yet subsided, her arm still held out right in front of her with her blade on a direct course with Kurt. And she was less that a few meters from him. Desperately trying to move her arm in time, she bended it up into what would have been a ninety degree angle. Instead, the lower edge of the blade sliced through Kurt's upper arm. Christa, in a daze at having injured her friend, blindly tried moving it down to get it out. That was when a dark green blur shot between Kurt and Christa, somehow removing the blade from Kurt's arm, normalizing Christa's arm, and grabbing Kurt by the shoulders before carrying him back down. Down to, Christa hadn't noticed, the rest of the recruits, who had apparently been there for quite some time, watching them.
"BRAUN! KIRSCHTEIN! GET ME SOME DAMN TOURNIQUETS!"
Christa sped down to the rest of them, Kurt lying in Shadis's arms, the older man's hands pressed very tightly to Kurt's arm. Reiner and Jean were searching through a large box the same color as the Commandant's jacket, obviously looking for some sort of remedy. She ran towards the navy haired boy, only to be stopped by Shadis's cold, swordpoint stare, a mixture of rage, indignation, shock, worry, and protectiveness.
He gestured to Reiner and Jean, who had applied tourniquets to Kurt's injury. "Take him for a minute, you two," he said, quietly and acidly.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT, LENZ?! YOU MISTAKE LANGE'S ARM FOR A PIECE OF DAMN BREAD?!" He all but spat at her.
"Sir I-," she tried to say.
"NO! YOU DON'T GET TO SPEAK! YOUR'E LUCKY I DON'T HAVE YOU COURTMARTIALED BEFORE YOU LEGALLY EVEN CAN BE! BECAUSE, LENZ, IT CAN DAMN WELL BE ARRANGED!"
"I was only-!"
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"Everyone quiet!"
Both Shadis and Christa neglected to say a word as Kurt stood up.
"You," he said, pointing at Shadis."What was the point of this exercise? Getting a deep enough cut in the target, correct? Well if need be-" Kurt gestured to the halved piece of bread above them. "Then I'll damn well vouch for that as deep enough. The girl did what you asked. If what happened was anyone's fault, it's mine. I was the one who fixed her poise so as to improve her performance! And why do you care if any of us see a little blood? We all know where we go after this! If anything, this was helpful! It's going to prepare us for our daily lives when we don't need a drill instructor anymore! If you want to take out that frustration because you're a sixty something drill instructor who can't get enough dates, pick the one who is actually at fault, fool!"
Some people covered their mouths, some people almost whooped, other were deathly quiet, including Shadis himself. But only for a moment.
"You," he whispered, almost like a quiet knife plunging into someone's back. "Will run laps. Until I hear a sorry. And get a damn salute out of you. Is that clear, Cadet?"
"Crystal, sir," Kurt responded. "And my apologies for my behavior breaking protocol." The secret Earl gave a salute with his good arm, and then stumbled before Christa caught his arm and helped him up. His face was very white, but he still gave her that secretive little smirk that he apparently saved just for her.
"That was foolish, you know," she whispered. "Do you know how many bruises he could've given you?"
"No," He replied. "But you can scold me later, 'Mother'."
LATER THAT NIGHT
"Alright, you guys," Eren said, stretching his arms and yawning as the fire crackled. "I'm gonna head inside. Even with this fire, its really chilly out. You gonna be ok?"
"We'll be fine, thanks," Christa replied.
Eren gave a sloppy wave goodbye, and ran to join Armin, Ymir, and Connie as they all trudged inside.
It was just Christa and Kurt now. What would they say? What could be talked about, around a warming fire and underneath a starlit sky, that wouldn't make either remember the events of the day? How Christa wanted to forget them. Every time she saw his blood coating her blade in her head, she wanted to throw up. Or cry. Or both. Either one sounded preferable to living that again.
"Well, your poise is definitely improved," he said. "The slice was too deep, though. We'll have to work on that. Don't want you blade getting stuck, no-"
"Can you just shut up?!" she growled.
Kurt's eye went wide. Apparently he'd not seen this coming. What an idiot. An adorable idiot, Christa decided, but still an idiot.
"Just be quiet!" she yelled at him. "Think of one reason, one reason why I'd want to picture that again!"
"Look if you're talking about today, it's fi-"
"NO IT'S NOT!"
Christa couldn't stop herself. She buried her face in her hands and wept, tears rushing down her face and staining her boots to drip through and wet her socks. Why didn't Kurt understand? Why didn't he get it?!
"I'm sorry," she half whispered, half sobbed. "I just...I could have killed you today! And you're too casual about it! Aren't you angry at me?!"
Kurt started laughing.
"Why on earth would I be angry at you for what happened?"
Christa full on punched Kurt, sending the navy haired boy sprawling to the ground save for his good arm breaking the fall just in time. Good. Then she wouldn't have almost killed him for the second time that day.
"Why?! Why aren't you angry?! Am I that unintimidating!?"
Kurt latched his hand onto her wrist, stopping her from hitting him again. He pulled her arm behind him, drawing their faces less than an inch from each other's. Christa's cheeks warmed up greatly.
"Look," he dangerously whispered. " It wasn't you that sent that blade into my arm. It wasn't you that injured me. It was me. I was the one that adjusted your arm. Without me, none of this would have happened! So quit whining about something you didn't-" he pinched his nose and sighed. "All I'm saying is, you don't need to get caught up in your thoughts about it and cause yourself pain. Had I just left you alone, we wouldn't be having this conversation-"
In the half instant that Kurt's eyes were closed when he blinked, something very warm crashed into his lips. When they were open again, he saw Christa, her nose next to his , eyes closed and lips...on his. Kurt was almost certain that his eyes increased in size tenfold. He almost tried to get her off of him, but he just...couldn't. It would crush her.
He couldn't act at all. He couldn't. It would debase him, turn back all the work he had done in the past two years. All the self improvement, everything he sacrificed to make himself able to survive, it would all disappear with one, innocent little movement in this instant.
So...warm...
And then Kurt let himself go.
His ivory skinned hand buried itself in her hair, drawing her closer to him as they kissed. Several, long, wondrous minutes passed by, and then they broke apart.
"Kurt, I...damn," Christa said. "I just messed up your whole plan, didn't I? Remember your plan for yourself, the one you told me when we first agreed to help each other out? This is gonna put some major kinks in it..." she giggled and then wiped her eyes.
"No...I just...I...I can...work around it...maybe?" Kurt was teetering on the edge of not having any idea what to say, however lacking in his life the concept had been. He was almost sure that some sort of disgusting, nervous grin was splitting his face, accompanied by a scarlet face.
"If you have to," Christa replied, leaning over to kiss him again. Kurt caught her this time(THIS CHANNEL HAS BEEN HACKED BY ENVY. Envy: Geez, I can't stand this sappy shit! But at the same time it is pretty cute. Oh and look! He's gotta be taller than the FullMetal ANT! He's just gotta! *Grabs Kurt and a giant ruler with hentai décor* WHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTT? 4'10?! ONE FUCKING INCH SMALLER?!*Makes a million little Hughes and kills them in ferociously violent ways while the troll song plays*)
2 YEARS LATER
"See you guys at lunchtime," Mina Carolina said as she walked off to perform maintenance on cannon fixtures and railroads that hadn't yet received it. Eren watched her go for a moment. Then he looked about at the others. All working, in perfect sync with one another. One person would take out a cannon part, hand it to someone else, who would in turn, hand it to two other Cadets who would fix the part and then bring it back to the first person. Then he looked behind him, out at Trost. Such beauty, a testament to the progress humanity had made since that day. Towers jutted out of the seas of shorter houses, beacons of light for the whole world to see.
'Has it really been five years? Look at us. Ready to stand tall again. We can do it! We can beat these things, and get our world back! Mankind didn't start this fight...but we're gonna finish it!'
A sound, almost as loud as the tortured screams of the dead, cracked the sky and brought everything back into focus. A bright, golden thunderbolt lanced down from the heavens, scorching the blue of the sky a dark, puke green.
He'd seen this before.
Already knowing what it was, he turned around with heavy feet. A great cloud of steam greeted him, the whitish substance wisping off into the air to reveal.
A face.
A face with no skin, red and pink muscles, prominent eyebrows, a permanent scowl, seemingly endless rows of white teeth, and human eyes.
A face that towered over the Wall and cast a shadow on the houses fifty meters below. Eren had stood in that shadow once.
The Colossal Titan had returned.
Another monster well slain. Once again, I deeply apologize for the late due date. I will try my best to compensate.
R&R!