"And it's time for me to spread my wings."

I clawed at my face with my nails as pain overtook my whole body.

That's what I thought. That's what I wanted. I wanted to be as tall as a Titan so they could see how much us humans had truly suffered. I doubted a bluejay could do much, but that's what I was.

I never thought I actually would fly, as my sight suddenly skyrocketed. Things became a blur to me. 'Kill...kill...kill...kill...'

What was running through my mind? I wanted to make sense of it, but I couldn't. All I could think of was killing. Murder. Death. Violence. Destruction. Eradication. End. Blood. Kill.

I reached out with my hands, but they seemed grotesquely huge. My fingers were still long, but now they looked as if they were made of smooth silver. I wanted to shriek in surprise, but my mouth didn't move. Rather, it was non-existent.

The very realization of my lack of a mouth made me want to scream more, ironically.

But then, I smelled something. A familiar scent that stung my nostrils and made them flare at the very hint of it.

Titan flesh.

I turned my head and immediately saw a monster. But it was my height. I didn't care about it as I suddenly reached out and my fist connected with its jaw, sending it flying off. Blood flew into the air.

'Kill...kill...kill...'

I whirled on my heel when I noticed it was smooth, without the subtle clicking of gears. I looked down, seeing small clumps of greasy, brown hair edge my vision. I didn't care, as I noticed something far more...alarming.

My leg was perfect.

Fully healed. Flawlessly shaped. Perfectly muscled. Scarless skin. Granted, dark grey lines streaked down the skin, but that hardly mattered at the moment. 'I'm moving...on my own...'

Feeling a sudden rush of energy flow to my core, I turned around and began to sprint. No stumbles...no limping...no dials...It was perfect in every flex of sinew, every bend of every joint. I could move my leg again. Memories of flying past Wall Maria as a child flashed across my mind, and I wanted to smile, despite my missing mouth. 'Kill.'

I skidded to a stop using my heels when I heard a vicious thumping that resembled my own footsteps behind me. I looked to see a Titan of a few meters taller than I. It bore mysteriously teal eyes, and a crazily-set jaw, like God had been drunk when he made the face of this monster.

Chiseled muscle lined its sides and chest and legs...and pretty much everywhere else.

For some reason, I trusted this beast. I didn't know why, but I did. It felt right.

We both turned when we saw a tiny 3-meter Titan hobble towards is with an eerie grin plastered on its face unnaturally. Moving like lightning compared to the strange one I'd met a few moments ago, I reached out, grabbed its neck, and—

'Die. Die. Kill. Kill.'

"Die...Kill..."

Opening my eyes slowly, the image of blinding light greeted me first. 'What sort of dream was that...?' It had felt so real, so unique, so true.

And yet...my leg was still a gleaming heap of metal parts. I sighed.

"Jade!"

Startled, I jumped a little in my spot to see Armin and Eren on both sides of me. I blinked and looked right up at Armin. "Min...? Ren...? What's...happening?" Why was my voice so sore? Why was my head so heavy?

"Jade!" I looked farther up ahead and saw Mikasa wielding both of her swords defensively in front of us. I gaped, unable to think of anything worth saying.

"Look, can you move?" Eren asked me. He looked shaky, pale, and honestly more likely than me to be unable to move. Sweat cloaked his forehead, and he looked terrified—not to mention uncomfortable.

I moved to prove my unspoken point of being perfectly fine, but my arms gave out on me, causing me to slip and fall back onto the ground. "Agh...Barely...I'm the goddamn cripple, remember?" Why did I feel so grumpy?

"Tell us everything that happened!" Armin suddenly said to us both. I slipped again out of surprise at the urgency in his tone. "I'm sure they'll understand!" It took me a while to notice, but there were tears in his eyes.

"Armin...?" Eren squinted his eyes at Armin, like that would make sense of the strange situation.

"Hear that!?" I refocused my eyes to realize there were other people in front of us. They were a safe distance away, but still close enough to hear our conversation. "He said 'I'll kill you all'! And she told him to 'kill'!"

"Yeah, no doubt about it," a soldier agreed with his comrade, making me cock my head to the side. "They want to devour us all. She even looks like a Titan."

'W-what's going on...Why are their swords pointed at us? Those are for killing Titans, not humans! Why are they...looking at me like I'm some kind of monster...?' I reached up nervously to cover my ears, to block out the sound of my heart, but instead, a sharp feeling of pain rushed through my fingertips. I hissed and looked that them right away.

They were bleeding profusely.

"Don't touch your ears, Jade," Armin whispered quietly, his eyes fixed on the side of my head. "Your ears...aren't the same way they used to be..."

"Wh-what do you mean...?" My voice quivered anxiously. 'What happened?'

"We'll talk about them later, okay?" Armin tried calming me down, but he himself looked ready to have a heart attack.

'Why am I...such a monster?'

-Third Person's POV-

"So that's how we refilled our gas and got out of Trost District," Connie finished off. Ymir and Krista stood in front of him, drinking in every word he spoke. They were tense with surprise and fright at their terrifying journey to escape the walls of Trost.

The blonde on Connie's right nodded her head slowly. "I see," she murmured, looking guilty. "I'm really sorry. We requested supply support for you guys multiple times, but..."

"We finally got our hands on some too," added Ymir, looking disappointed.

Then, Krista's eyes widened briefly before she looked around. "S-so then the people that aren't here are all..."

Connie blinked before getting her message. Sweaty, he looked away from her and instead preferred the stone ground beneath them. "Yeah."

They both paused.

"Even Mikasa?" asked Ymir, wide-eyed in shock as she took notice of the fact that the 1st Ranker was currently absent.

"N-no, I thought she came back later with Jean and the others," Connie corrected, looking confused. He looked around before realizing Ymir was right; Mikasa was nowhere to be seen.

Ymir turned to face Jean, who sat slumped at a table not too far away. With him sat a depressed Annie, a stone-faced Reiner, and a haunted Bertolt. "Jean!" the 11th Ranker called. "Don't tell me Mikasa is injured."

Jean didn't reply, instead continuing his seemingly careful study of the ground below his feet. His eyes looked scared and daunted.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Connie asked, his brows furrowed together. He looked concerned for his friend's well-being.

Jean finally looked in the trio's direction, before taking a gulp of water from the waterskin clutched in his hand and wiping his mouth. "We were ordered to keep that confidential," he said after a small while, remembering his utter relief and joy at Jade's sudden appearance. But now that the ecstasy had left him, all he felt was pain, pain, pain. What had happened to her ears? Why was she found in the carcass of a Titan? Why was she still alive? Those questions had come flooding in after she had been removed from his sight. "I can't say."

"Confidential?" blinked Connie.

"Seriously?" grumbled Ymir.

"Although," Jean continued, mildly surprising his small audience. "it's not something they can keep under wraps for long. It's only a matter of time before everyone finds out." His dark gaze lifted up to blankly stare into nowhere in particular. "That is, assuming people live to hear of it."

His last sentence left them deathly silent.

-Jade Covert's POV-

"Recruits Jaeger and Covert, as well as Recruits Ackerman and Arlert!" a man bellowed in front of us, his face masked in a large brown beard. His tone and terrified eyes left me quaking in my spot. "Your present actions are treason! What do you have to say in your defense!?"

"..." I knew that even if I tried to say anything, my voice would be too shaky to understand a single word. Eren, who held my hand in fear, was sweating buckets as he stared up at the man before us.

"Any attempts to mislead or escape will be met with a bombardment of high-explosive shells!" he continued, pointing up at a certain direction. "This is no bluff! Let me be frank!" He moved closer and glared at Eren and me from far away. "What are you two? Humans, or Titans?"

I stiffened. "What sort...of a question...is that...?" I whispered to myself, completely thunderstruck at the man's words. 'Why are they glaring at us? Is it because of my ears? Do they see me as a Titan-like girl who kills just the same as Titans themselves!? But...what about Eren? He isn't marked with such a terrible—or obvious—trait.'

"We do not understand the question!" Eren finally shouted to the Captain—I'm just assuming what position the man had—and his fingers tightened around mine as we waited nervously.

"Feigning ignorance?" the man snapped. "Damn monsters, I dare you to try that again! We'll blast you to pieces in an instant! We won't even give you time to show your true colors!"

"True...colors...?" I blinked, my voice breathy. "What—"

"There are plenty of witnesses!" the Captain continued, not giving us any room to argue with him. "We all saw the moment when you both emerged from within Titan carcasses! Manki—"

I drowned him out and began to lose myself in my own thoughts and conjecture. We emerged...from Titan carcasses? Like, we survived while being eaten or something?

Or was my dream reality?

As the Captain and other soldiers kept talking and shouting at me and Eren, I bent over slowly. I felt tears slip from behind my lashes and fall onto my cheeks. My hands were over my ears, just over the disc-like thing so that I wouldn't be cut. My legs—both the crippled and the working—were splayed in front of me like that of a broken doll. I felt Armin's hand run along my back, tracing soothing circles with his thumb as he tried to calm me down. It didn't work, as I kept silently sobbing.

Even as Mikasa walked forward, threatening the soldiers with her swords, I felt my heart squeeze tightly. 'This is all just a nightmare...' I tried to convince myself. 'When you wake up, you'll be on that cliff with Annie sleeping next to you. You'll be ready to clean the wall with Thomas and Mina the next day, your ears will be back to normal, and you'll be your normal, crippled self again.' My hands were shaking violently over my ears, causing my fingers to slip swiftly and crookedly. I felt the blades of my new ears graze my skin, and something sticky dripped on my shoulder. I knew it to be blood right away by the stench.

Armin left me as he began to verbally fight with Mikasa. Eren was shivering beside me, and I looked down at my sliced palms. The cuts were deep yet jagged in the wrinkled mass of flesh. Blood was waterfalling off my skin and pooling on the ground. Eren was too stunned at what the people before us were doing, but I'd accepted it as reasonable.

We were monsters, after all.

"We're human!" Eren suddenly boomed, drawing me back to reality. I looked at him in all my broken glory; tears streaming down my face, blood sometimes staining a patch of skin along my cheek, and my red eyes ugly and puffy. But he insisted we were human.

There was a scary pause, and all I could hear was the sweeping of dust hitting the stone ground. The Captain's eyes were hidden within the shadows of his face, then he finally moved his lips. I carefully awaited his answer. "I see. Don't think ill of me." Then, slowly but surely, he began to raise his hand to signal the cannon. "There's no other way. No man can prove...that they're not demons, after all..." He flicked his wrist.

Armin gasped as Mikasa's cat-like reflexes freaked. "Eren, Armin, Jade, we're going!"

Then I finally thought of a way to be useful.

Standing up with my mechanical leg, I moved in front of them. "Cover your ears," I hissed with a darkened expression. Startled, they agreed. But Mikasa still picked up Eren and began to run.

Using a sense of mine that I wasn't aware of, I moved a single blade in my left ear. A scraping sound echoed and boomed throughout the small area we were in. Then I moved the second one. Then the third. Then the fourth. This process continued until all of them were shifting and grinding against each other to create an abominable sound. Every person moved to cover their ears, except the Captain.

He, instead, threw his arm down to fire the cannon.

I didn't care. 'Dying is better than living like a beast.'

But I remembered Kenny and Joseph. I remembered Daddy and Mommy. Mikasa, Armin, and Eren...Marco, Bertolt, and Reiner...Jean and Annie...

They never called me a beast. They never called me a monster.

They might once they see me now, but I knew them too well. They would accept me without hesitation. They loved me...each in their own way.

Kenny loved me for my comfort. "Call me Kenny, alright? That's what your… your brother called me."

Joseph loved me for being his sister. "I love you, Bluejay. Don't worry, I'm right here."

Daddy loved me for loving him back. "Stay alive, my little Bluejay."

Mommy loved me for being her daughter. "Live for other people."

Mikasa loved me for my loyalty. "I was wrong; you're the strongest person I know."

Armin loved me for our close friendship. "I don't like how you meaninglessly put yourself down so much."

Eren loved me for my idealism. "I think...of us like siblings. I can't imagine a life where you're not in it."

Marco loved me for being thoughtful towards others. "You smile despite your leg. How is that not strong…?'

Bertolt loved me for my calm side. "You deserve more than a leg that refuses to work."

Reiner loved me for my selflessness. "Thanks, Jade."

Jean loved me for my honesty. "Why don't you share your talent with us?"

And Annie...she loved me for being myself. Nothing more. "I respect you."

I closed my eyes briefly as a memory poured into the unfilled cracks of my account on life.

'Bluejay, I won't be coming back anytime soon. Tell your father that you accidentally wandered into the forest during the night. Tell him you couldn't find me because you thought I ran outside the Wall.'

'But...' The girl was utterly confused. She had woken up in an unfamiliar place, in the woods not far from the village. There was a bandage over her left elbow, and her eyes were adjusting to the darkness around her.

'Look, my little bluejay,' the person in front of her said. 'I gave you an anesthetic so that you wouldn't complain as I brought you here. Nobody can see this, okay? Never harm yourself on purpose, okay, sweetie?' The person was now cleaning up a new syringe needle, wiping it over with a cloth before sticking it in a jar and sucking out the contents. The contents were still blue, so the girl just assumed it was more anesthesia.

'But...Daddy said—'

'It doesn't matter what your Daddy said!' the person suddenly snapped viciously. 'But remember this. Stay close to that Jaeger boy, okay?'

The girl cocked her head to the side. 'Why?'

'Because he will be the key to our survival.' And the girl's relative stabbed her in the neck with the needle, before pumping in the contents. The person was sobbing as they did so. 'I hope this was worth my life.' They cracked open a bottle and then poured the liquid between Jade's gaping lips. 'Your dream to go over the walls...can be complete now, bluejay. Save your friends for your Mommy, would you? She'll be proud of you if you do, okay?'

And so, I dragged my hand across the blades of my hands viciously, feeling lightning burst from my fingertips and fly through the air. It was off instinct. But the urge in my heart was clear, forcing me to smirk darkly.

I want to protect my friends.

And then an explosion of steam ensued.