Levi rounded the rooftop where the lightning had decimated the ground and found himself face to face with what could be described loosely as disappointment.

Alongside a great deal of steam, all that existed for him to investigate was a smoking crater, lightly imprinted into the ground; Hange perhaps may have had a good deal of excitement to investigate what was surely something of pertinence to her, but for someone like Levi, this was nothing more than something to shrug at. He circled the crater as slowly as he was able, but found nothing that appealed to his interest or that would stand as anything of immediate relevance. He was ready to dismiss it as a freak weather event, before something finally did catch his eye, resting near the building where the lightning had sheared half of it away. Touching down on the blasted remains of what was once the third of fourth floor of the establishment, he looked down at what seemed to be the remains of four humans.

Their bodies had been blasted with a tremendous deal of heat, and was likely what had killed them; expressions open and wide-eyed, they stared back at him from the dead as he toed each of their forms for any sign of life. Upon finding none, he concluded that they had been unfortunate victims of happenstance, but took note of their similar black attire. It was entirely possible that they had been the same type of hyenas that the Military Police had taken such offense to and complained about for such an extended period of time. While Levi couldn't have been further bothered from caring about their deaths, he became even more apathetic as he walked away from their corpses. People like that deserved a death, as being those of a desperate species who chose only to scavenge off those who had no way to protect it.

"Don't assume anything kid, take anything for granted and it'll come back to bite you in the ass."

As he reached the edge of the building, he turned back as the words of years past whispered at his ears. Near where he was standing, shadowed in the corner of the coming daylight, an arm lay, surely belonging to one of the thieves who had met their end at the hands of what seemed to be natural fury. He stepped closer to it and looked at the stump where it had once connected to a shoulder and realized that, unlike the rest of the body parts around him, it had not been blown away by heat and force. The upper portion looked violently and bluntly severed, not at all burned; blood had pooled from where it had connected to its body. The sight was peculiarly familiar and felt very out of place alongside the rest of the charred remains. Shaking his head, Levi looked away and made to head to the chapel in the northeast portion of the district where he would get a last wide look of the area.

He tried very hard to ignore the fact that the arm looked almost identical to as if it had been bit off.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Ignoring the frantic rambling of the other several dozen soldiers atop the wall, Janice shouldered her way through the crowd of pointing and gawking and panicking people after the fluttering wings that were retreating quickly for the western side of the district.

"Excuse me, sir! Sir!"

She was well aware she was speaking loud enough to be heard and was just as aware that she was being ignored; Nanaba was directing several Scouts around her, gesturing and speaking very quickly. Drawing up just behind her, Janice took a deep breath and fell into line, waiting for a chance to speak. She was in no mood to be ignored, but knew that impatience would not get her anywhere. She was just as at a loss at what had happened, but as she had been looking directly at the first area of impact, not where Levi had gone to investigate, she believed she had seen something that likely everyone else had missed.

"I need the four of you to stay here. Throw the rest of the Scouts ahead of all the Garrison members and fresh cadets, make sure none of them go anywhere NEAR leaving the wall. The two of you are coming with me, we are going to examine that point of impact… "

"Sir!"

Janice chose that moment to interject and was somewhat surprised when Nanaba spun to face her, the calm and amused look gone from earlier, replaced by something much more impatient and angry.

"WHAT?!"

Grinding her heels to a halt, Janice caught her words and straightened.

"What was that, that that just happened?"

It was a stupid question, one that she was only asking to ease her way into conversation, which she knew would go over just about as well as trying to ease a cow through a trapdoor. Nanaba looked almost disgusted by the question as she resumed walking quickly towards the edge of the wall, two Scouts in tow; Janice knew she didn't have much time and when it appeared Nanaba had no intention of answering her question, she followed it up with a statement that would surely prove much more worthy of attention.

"I saw something there, when the lightning came down."

A quick chin jab over her shoulder and a slight slowing of her pace was all Janice needed to know that the curiosity of her superior had been snagged.

"What?"

"There was a titan there, at the point of impact. It looked about the size of a fifteen meter class, and while I'm not sure if it was there before or after the event… "

She purposefully trailed off as though lost in thought, though she wanted nothing more than the silence to let her words sink in. Nanaba actually stopped walking and turned to stare down at her, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

"I'm not sure what exactly it is you thought you saw… "

"There was a titan."

The four words had been loaded onto Janice's tongue, but the voice that echoed them was not her own. Turning, she saw Mikasa standing just behind her, a passive determination written on her face.

"She's telling the truth. The lightning illuminated the area very briefly, if you hadn't been looking at the spot, you would've missed it."

Nanaba grit her teeth before looking between the pair of them cautiously. Janice had not been expecting Mikasa to back her up on this, especially considering that the taller girl had been looking in quite the opposite direction at the time it had happened. But Janice knew what she had seen and she was not lying. She had indeed seen something in the shape of a titan outlined briefly in the yellow flash and was doing her best not to play up how intrigued she was. Her ultimate goal in telling Nanaba this was to be able to accompany this scouting party to the epicenter of the event, she had to know what she had just seen. Were there titans capable of manipulating weather?

"You can back up her story?"

Mikasa crossed her arms and straightened, though there wasn't much to straighten.

"Yes."

Looking around and behind her for no more reason than to let her mind clearly brew with contemplation, she looked back up and raised a finger between both the dark-haired girls, a different sort of curiosity floating onto her face.

"You two… aren't like a thing, are you?"

Janice and Mikasa nearly beat each other down expressing their denial of this assertion.

"No, no, no, we're not… "

"No, we just… we're just… "

Ignoring their sputterings, Nanaba cocked her head.

"You aren't just saying that to stand up for your girlfriend?"

More of the same hurried denials and they seemed to do the job enough. Nanaba sighed and looked at her compatriots who looked thoroughly disinterested in involving themselves in the conversation; looking forward back at the both of them, she jerked her head.

"Stick to my ass. When we reach the site, you're going to point out exactly what you saw and where."

With that, she ran for the edge and was over the side, her Scouts just behind her. Blinking away her surprise at the speed of her success, Janice followed suit, duly aware of the echoed footsteps of Mikasa beside her.

Why would she do that for me?

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Annie made her way as carefully as she could towards what was the area she was needed. Reiner's instructions were precise and she knew that if she didn't follow them as such, her and their plans may become altered very severely as well as quickly. No titans obstructed her path for which she was grateful and within minutes, the boulder came into sight.

Its size was more imposing then then it had ever been before; it wasn't anything like a perfect sphere, and as such, it made sense why the object was being moved so inefficiently by the horses. She saw them, pulling as hard as they could against the dozens of tethers that connected them to it, but their struggles were about as futile as anything could be. They had moved it probably fifty or so meters which was something, but wasn't anything remotely resembling progress that could be worked with. Not slowing in her pace, she drew up just behind it.

She saw faces of surprise from the soldiers manning the horses at her sudden appearance, but she paid them no mind. Her job was one that had to be done as quickly as she could, and as she looked up at the pale sky, she knew there was even less time available to her than she had previously guessed. Steeling her will, she went to work.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Howling with all the fear and confusion that he felt pent up inside him, Eren crashed into yet another building, knocking the majority of it to the street below.

What's HAPPENED to me?!

One moment he had seen the men bearing down on him, the next, there had been a sharp stab in his leg as one of his would-be assailants attempted to disable him, and then, he had been standing in the street, as tall as the building he had been in. All but one of the men had seemingly been blasted to death by some intense heat and the last one, so small he then seemed, had been picked up by Eren and his arm bitten off before he was thrown aside. Not being able to believe what he had just done to the man who had become small enough for him to pick up, Eren had looked down and realized that what he thought had been a dream before had been nothing of the sort.

The titan's body he now inhabited was extremely muscled and build as lean as any fifteen meter class could be. It easily absorbed the shock of the blows as he crashed from building to building, roaring and panicking in a way that would indicate to anyone else a titan gone mad. He hadn't been dreaming before, he had BEEN a titan, delivering instant and satisfying justice to those who had invaded his world and destroyed his childhood. That thought alone was something to feel good about, but it was a candle in an ocean compared to the torrent of confused and frantic emotions he was feeling.

On one hand, he wanted to stop moving and just think, as Mikasa would surely have advised him of, to try and logically come to a conclusion about what he didn't understand, but he knew there was no explanation for what had happened to him. He had become a titan and now here he was, stomping his way through the streets, driving himself against and through buildings, and letting his fears overwhelm him.

A human who could become a titan…

The thought kept recurring through his screaming mind; this was something he had done once before hadn't it? During his dream that hadn't been a dream, right? And that meant there was a way out of this terrifying situation, yes, he could revert back to being a human. Hope suddenly welled in him like a spring, and he managed to hold himself still and cease his panicked rampage long enough to stop and at least consider that his existence was not a foregone conclusion.

Mikasa would think the same thing, and she would be right. Freaking out does me no damn good, I need to THINK about this, think about how this could have happened. There has to be a connection, a similarity, to when this happened the first time in regard to it happening now… I just need to think about it.

Eren sat down on the roof of a two story building and put his head in his giant hands. He did his best to ignore the tremendous proportions that he now bore, and closed his eyes, doing everything in his power to remember and think. It didn't come easily at first, but after several seconds, a calm began to settle on at least his thinking; deep down his feelings were still crashing about madly, but he pushed them down in an effort to get ahold of himself.

That dream… was real, I must have been. I was a titan, and somehow, I was able to… fall out of it? Get out of it? How did I do that?

He remembered killing more titans than he could count before…

Yes!

He had been heavily damaged as a titan before and that had been the condition it had been in when he had found himself as human, sitting on the floor of the building, alive and confused. At the time he had paid no mind to what it had meant and had simply tried to escape his way to somewhere where he would be safe. But now he could see that this was his best option, he had to get himself eaten by other titans to the point where he had been the first time. Standing and tearing a piece of the roof off as he did, he looked around desperately for titans before punching the neighboring building in frustration.

Idiot… have to wait at least…

Looking to the paling sky, he squinted towards where the sun was going to eventually rise and clenched his fists.

At least another hour.

He began making his way much more calmly through the streets, with a much greater deal of self-control. This was a remediable situation, it had to be, he just had to be patient; the sun would rise and the titans would be on the move again. Then, it would simply be a matter of bothering enough of them to the point where they would dogpile onto him and all he would have to do is lean himself back against a building when they did. He would be manually ejected from this hulking, brutish form and thusly be free of the titan's confines.

But it happened, unfortunately, to be that Eren's patience was not something he had ever been prideful of. So as he looked over towards the boulder that had come about as a result of the breach, he couldn't help but begin plodding his way towards it.

Well… until then, maybe I can at least TRY doing something productive. Besides, who's ever had a fucked up advantage like this before?

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Mikasa heard Janice swear as their group of five slowed in midair to allow a sixth person to jet into their ranks, sliding in easily as he positioned himself next to Nanaba. Mikasa only needed to crane her head slightly to see that it was none other than Levi himself. He seemed in no mood to make conversation, judging by his silence upon joining their ranks, but Nanaba did not seem to have any intention to let that be all they got out of him.

"Well?"

He spoke without turning to face her.

"Nothing there. I don't know if we will have any similar luck here, but… "

Then, he turned back, his eyes more skeptical than anything.

"… considering you found it prudent to bring two fresh cadets, I assume there may a little more to this than I assumed."

Looking as though she had swallowed some foul tasting paste, Nanaba looked back with him before turning her head back forward.

"They say that they saw something near the base of where the lightning struck and they backed up each other's stories. I brought them to show us where they saw what they did."

"And may I ask what they think they saw?"

It was not lost on Mikasa that the disbelief in his voice carried over to his words as well. This hardly offended her as she had lied to Nanaba's face about the sighting that Janice had witnessed, but she had seen it as a chance to get down there as well. She knew that Janice had wanted the same thing, and perhaps she hadn't even seen anything either. But even if it was a lie, it had succeeded in getting them apart of the team to investigate.

"A titan very near to where the lightning struck."

"Really."

Mikasa looked to Janice and saw her watching Levi most carefully. She didn't assume the shorter girl would snap at the captain over his obvious sarcasm, but after their tense encounter, she wasn't putting anything past her, and readied a response in case she saw Janice's mouth open. She didn't look annoyed or ready to defend her claim, but instead looked almost relieved. Levi looked back for only a second, before returning his attention forward.

"Robin, was it?"

Mentally, Mikasa cursed.

"Yes, sir."

"Move up, alongside me. You, stick to these three."

Janice looked over to Mikasa briefly, almost as though she was asking permission. Mikasa could only shrug slightly and then watch as Janice obeyed the order and followed after Levi as he streaked lower towards the ground. With the still relatively large amount of darkness, they vanished against the blackness of the streets; Mikasa looked after them, for several seconds before one of the soldiers alongside Nanaba called out with serious alarm in his voice.

"SIR!"

She looked to him in annoyance at his noise, but her eyes widened as well as she followed his gaze. Mikasa looked too then to the boulder and wondered why this had been cause for alarm, when she realized it was moving much quicker than it had been. Quick enough that it may very well have been able to reach the breach by dawn.

"It's… moving… and… is that a… titan?!"