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 21 – Captured!
Armin stared wide-eyed at the doorway as he heard the sudden clatter of wood on stone and a loudly roared, "Son of a b…" that was abruptly cut off, accompanied by a series of ominous thuds and grunts of pain.
Mikasa was already darting through the open door, with Eren right on her heels. The two of them were blocking Armin's view as he charged in after them.
"Look out!" a voice yelped.
"Get this bastard off of me!" a hard voice demanded.
"Scouts! That fucking cripple brought the damned Scouts!" a man's voice raged.
Then Armin's world opened up from a narrow tunnel of rock to a scene of chaos, illuminated by lanterns set high on the rock wall behind him. They were in a cul-de-sac between two buildings, a street and others buildings visible, though the sky wasn't. They'd reached the Capital and made it into the Underground!
But two men were lying motionless on the ground, one of Levi's crutches lying between them, and another man was clutching a bloody forearm, leaning heavily against the wall and cursing, while a fourth was curled into a ball near his feet, retching, next to Levi's other crutch. Levi was balanced on his left foot, with his back to the wall, behind a fifth man, panting, his bad leg wrapped around the man's legs, his right hand tangled in the man's greasy hair, yanking his head back, his combat knife, pressed against the man's exposed throat.
"Back off now, or I slit his throat!" Levi yelled to five other men clustered around them. Mikasa and Eren were between them and Levi, their swords drawn and at the ready, but not yet attacking.
Armin yelped in dismay and terror as an eleventh person he hadn't seen grabbed him from behind by his hair, pinning his legs and yanking his head back in exactly the same manner as Levi's hostage, and he felt a sharp edge pressing into his throat.
"You three back off, or your little buddy here is going to end up wearing a matching smile to Geoffrey's," a cold, harsh woman's voice said, directly behind his ear. She was no taller than he was, but he felt like his legs were pinned by a band of steel, and she was bending him back so hard it felt like his spine was going to snap, pressed hard against her chest. To his humiliation, Armin ridiculously blushed, when he realized the slight softness he felt against his back was her breasts, which must have been no bigger than Mikasa's.
Mikasa cried, "Armin! Let him go!"
The woman stiffened behind him and Armin bit back a whimper of fear, but the knife didn't slice into him. Instead, miraculously, the pressure against his throat minutely eased. But then, in the next moment, the blade pressed tighter than before. Armin was afraid to breathe, but tried to slowly and shallowly he wouldn't get cut by the razor sharp steel as he did so.
"If you hurt him, I'll kill you all!" Eren growled, and Armin could see from the corner of his eye that Eren had lifted his right hand only a centimeter from his face.
"No one's dead yet, but if you kill him, you won't live to regret it," Levi promised coldly, apparently trying to diffuse the situation, likely having seen as he had that Eren was about to shift into his Titan form, if pushed.
Armin was shocked and relieved to hear the two motionless men weren't dead. He hadn't expected that kind of restraint from the Captain. It was far harder to knock a man out without killing him than to kill him. They all had a little better chance of making it out of this alive, now.
"Jasper, Darrow, Jerrod, check on Keith, Matt and Thomas," the cold voice behind him commanded, and without hesitation, three of the men skirted sideways to check on the two motionless ones and the one curled in a ball.
Armin's eyes widened at their instant obedience. They were big, powerful men. Was this small woman their leader? He thought in admiration that she must be as tough as Mikasa or Annie and then he winced as his heart clenched. Thinking Annie's name caused him physical pain. He'd really liked her. He still could have; her being a Titan didn't mean nearly as much to him as it did to the others. After all, one of his two best friends was a Titan. But Annie was evil. She murdered Levi's entire Squad, and killed others in her Titan form. There were a lot of people saying she'd even killed Marco, too, so he wouldn't reveal she'd stolen his maneuver gear to kill Hange's two Titan test subjects, or that she'd at least knocked him out and stolen his gear, and then he'd been eaten because he was without it. Why was he even thinking of her now, when he could die at any moment?
"Keith's still breathing and his head isn't even bleeding. When that gimp cracked him in the head with his crutch, I thought he brained him," one of the three reported, relief in his voice.
"Same with Matt," the second said.
"The cripple got Thomas in the balls, but he'll live," the third said.
"And I purposefully avoided the artery on your other man's arm, when I could have easily killed all five of them, and a few more as well. That's not why we're here," Levi said coolly.
"So why the hell did you bring three Scouts onto my turf?" the woman behind him challenged.
"We're just passing through, on our way to the surface," Levi replied levelly.
"Of course you are. Because that's not where you just came from," the woman scoffed, with a sneer in her voice. "I'm not surprised you brought Scouts instead of the Military Police, though. Scouts at least have the balls to go outside the Wall and face the Titans head on. But as you can see, you seriously underestimated both me and my men, if you think three Scouts is enough to take us. Although, you're not too bad in a fight either," she reluctantly admitted.
"How about you and your men back down the street, with your hostage, and the Scouts and I head the other way, with ours, and then we release them simultaneously, have them cross past one another out of reach, and then we each go our separate ways?" Levi recommended.
"Tch, right! Because your Scout buddies won't skewer us with their grappling hooks the second little Armin here is free," she snorted.
"Milady, you can't let them leave! Not when this cripple led them here and they know the way in through the Gate," one of the men denied vehemently.
"It's already too late, Darrow. The gimp's not the one who led them here. This little blond rat did that, didn't you Arlert?" she said, her voice suddenly weary and sad, instead of cold.
"How…how do you know my last name?" Armin asked fearfully, feeling his throat vibrate against the knife blade with every word.
"Damn it. I hadn't gotten a good enough look at you to be sure, but I knew it was too much to hope for, that your first name was just a coincidence, especially with that hair. Your grandfather told you the secret before he died, didn't he? I'm hurt that you've forgotten me, Armin. You told me next time you saw me you were going to bring me yellow flowers, so I'd have a little bit of sunshine here, in the dark. But we both know that was a lie.
"I thought the Titans had killed you when Wall Maria fell and you didn't come. I actually mourned you, you son of a bitch. You never would have broken your promise if your grandfather was still alive. So what did you do, when the Titans attacked, Armin? Did you push your grandfather into their mouths, trip him, or just run faster than he could?" she sneered.
"You bitch!" Mikasa yelled, infuriated.
"You actually know her? Who the hell is she, Armin?" Eren asked, angry and confused.
"Hypatia," Armin whispered in shock, unable to believe Theon's daughter, the shy, sweet young girl he'd met as a child, was now holding a knife at his throat and speaking so cruelly and bitterly. "I can't tell you, in front of these men," Armin apologized more loudly, to Eren. If they didn't know she was the Librarian's daughter, it could be dangerous for her, if they found out.
I really am an idiot. Why should I care? But he did. Knowing how that broken promise he'd made when he was only a boy had hurt her made him feel terrible. Was it his fault she was like this now?
He hadn't had the courage to tell her back then the real reason he wanted to bring her flowers that color: her eyes were the bright golden color of the morning sun, before it becomes too hot and leaches all the color away. He'd never seen eyes like hers, before or since. And her hair was long and straight and black, like Mikasa's. She'd looked beautiful and exotic, even as a little girl. He could only imagine what she might look like now. He hadn't had the chance to see, yet. He might never see her, if she killed him.
"I didn't mean to break my promise. But every day was a fight just to survive, and we didn't know the way into the Underground, from inside Wall Rose. We would have come down here if we did. It was terrible up there, we were starving, and then… then they sent everyone, all the adults, on that death march and… Grandfather, he…" A tear slid down his face, and then his neck, he could feel it pooling against the knife blade.
"Please, my friends didn't do anything wrong! Just let them all go. I don't want anyone to get hurt again, because of me. I'm sorry I hurt you," Armin said, sniffing, humiliated for crying in front of her and Captain Levi. Eren and Mikasa were used to his tears.
"Damn it, don't you dare start crying, you little shit!" Hypatia snarled, but her tone wasn't nearly as harsh as her words.
"We're not going anywhere without you, Armin. You, in the cloak, you let us all go now. This is your final warning," Eren snarled, his mouth hovering over his hand.
"Don't move! You're all under arrest!" a new voice ordered, and the combatants on both sides all cursed as a dozen Military Police appeared from the shadows of the alleyway across the street.
"Scatter!" Hypatia commanded, and in the next instant her men were running, including the man with the bleeding arm, leaving their two unconscious comrades and the curled up man lying on the ground, Geoffrey with Levi, and Hypatia with Armin.
"They can only kill me once, for my crimes, but they might try to catch me harder if they see me kill a Scout. You won't be that lucky if I ever see you down here again, Arlert," she said coldly, and then she was springing away from him, diving towards the building she'd apparently come out from before. Her body was completely concealed by an inconspicuous gray cloak that blended well with the buildings all around them, and she was wearing a hood which covered her hair, but he swore he saw the flash of one of her tawny golden eyes just for an instant.
The Military Police cursed, a half dozen of them chasing after the seven fugitives, while the other six circled their position.
"Scavenging off a dead Scout and impersonating one are both capital offenses," the Military Police Captain said gleefully, his sword drawn and pointed at them.
"Maneuver six in ten!" Levi ordered, yanking his knife hand away and pushing his hostage roughly aside, then shooting out his grappling hooks, snatching up one crutch and then the other, before swinging up and over the building on their right, in the opposite direction of Hypatia. In the next moment Mikasa had grabbed Armin, using her maneuver gear to swing over the building to Armin's left, the one Hypatia had disappeared into, and Eren took off to the right, likely to give them someone to follow other than their wounded Captain.
Maneuver six was to scatter and then circle back to their original position, and "in ten" meant ten minutes, so as long as they didn't lose track of where they had been, they'd be able to find Eren and the Captain again. Armin didn't think Mikasa could get lost, and Mikasa had told him and Eren that Levi had actually lived down here. Eren was another story. He only hoped his friend was able to find them.
Mikasa obviously made an effort not to lose her pursuers right away, drawing them further and further from where they'd been. When they returned, they saw that the men who'd been on the ground were gone, and the door to the passageway was closed. Armin suspected that Hypatia or her men had come back for the wounded men, that they had been drawing the Military Police away too, who hopefully wouldn't waste their time on two men who looked dead, and another who couldn't stand.
Armin knew that Captain Levi hadn't tried to reason with the Military Police because they were already convinced they were thieves and not real Scouts. The Military Police were notoriously close-minded and pigheaded. Levi's name would have had some impact on them, but he was out of uniform and currently didn't look anything like his usual self.
Eren's name would have meant something too, but most of everyone was still terrified of Eren, because of his Titan form, particularly the Military Police. At his trial, they had been the ones vocally calling for his execution. And he and Eren and Mikasa were all deserters.
They were so close to going home. If they could just evade the Military Police long enough to leave the Underground, they'd finally be safe. Well, as safe as anyone ever was, anymore.