Isilya sits with a small family in the Underground, splitting bread and cheese with them. They devour the small amount she is able to offer and cry as they thank her. She hugs one of the children back when he throws his arms around her, explaining to the parents that she only wishes she could do more. They shake their heads at her, telling her that what she's done means a lot to them. She smiles and leaves them with a second loaf of bread, heading back to her base on the other side of the city.
When Isilya gets to her base, she immediately opens up her portals to check in on the different districts within the walls. Karnes is fine, so is Calaneth. The northern villages of Wall Maria seem okay and of course, the people in Sina are doing more than fine compared to elsewhere. Isilya rolls her eyes as she thinks about the nobles in Mitras. She allows those thoughts to leave her mind as she opens a portal in Shiganshina. Her eyes widen at the sight that greets her.
A stampede. That's the only way to describe the way people rush down the street, pushing through others and screaming in fear. Isilya opens a portal in the direction people are running from. She stares through it at the giant titan head that peeks over the wall. Isilya manages to tear her gaze away from the titan long enough to notice the giant hole where there used to be a gate separating the outside of the Wall from the inside.
A string of curse words falls from Isilya's mouth as her breathing speeds up. She squishes her head between her palms and forces herself to breath normally. Now is not the time to panic. Now is the time to help people. Now is the time where people will need her more than ever before.
Isilya rushes to her lab and puts on her ODM gear in record time. She opens a small portal in her house in Shiganshina. When she sees that half of it has been destroyed, she closes the peephole of a portal and opens a larger one in the basement. Stepping through, she hears screaming and crying from every direction. She quickly runs upstairs and blanches at the number of titans in the town, the size of the hole in the Wall, and the many families struggling to fight their way out of the rubble and toward the boats that will take them to safety.
Isilya opens a small portal by her wrist. Peering through, she can see a lot of the boats are already full. With a string of curse words, she leaps into action. She shoots out her hooks into the taller house next to her own, flying through the place where her ceiling used to be. She decides to focus on killing as many titans as possible before they reach any people trying to make their way to the boats.
The Garrison does their best. Isilya sees far too many of them fall. It's a massacre. She shakes her head and reminds herself to focus. She thinks of the number of titans that she's killed outside of the walls. But now, she knows that it's different. Out there, nobody else is in danger. Here, an entire district could be devoured.
Isilya attaches her hooks to the shoulder of a 5-meter titan as it passes and slices its neck in one flowing movement. She stays attached to its body as it falls. When it lands, she slides off of the neck.
"Fifty-two" Isilya mumbles to herself.
"Is that you, Angel?" Isilya turns towards the small voice that just spoke. A young boy with a blond bowl cut and tears on his cheeks peers up at her as he wipes his face. She recognizes him.
"Armin, where are your parents. Or your Grandpa?" She asks, taking him by the hand and beginning to run, leading him to the boats. He doesn't answer. Isilya looks at him as they run. He doesn't even seem to have heard her.
On their way to the boats, an 8-meter titan stands up from where it was crouched behind a building. Isilya shoves Armin into the doorway of a house as she passes it and keeps running. She attaches one hook to a building behind the titan and flies right by its face, turning around quickly and spinning as she slices its neck, gracefully descending to the ground. She holds her blades the way that Levi had taught her. She wonders where he is right now. She sends a short and silent prayer to whatever higher being could be listening, begging them to make sure he's safe. Her anxiety begins to rise, but she shakes her head and reminds herself that now is not the time to be thinking about that. She needs to focus.
"Fifty-three" Isilya mumbles as she sheaths one blade and grabs Armin's hand again, running towards the boats. He is breathing heavily, eyes open wide. He begins to stumble over his own feet and eventually falls.
"Armin, we have to keep going," Isilya states, glancing at all of the titans she can see moving around the town. The child shakes as he tries to stand back up. Isilya pulls her cloak down.
"If we make it to the boats and see each other again in the future, I'll tell you my name." She states, trying to get him to focus on anything besides the situation they've found themselves in.
"You'll tell me your name…" Armin repeats her words, looking up at her. When he realizes that she's shown him her face again, he blinks, able to focus. Armin loves mysteries, and the mystery of Humanity's Angel is one that he has yet to solve. Isilya squeezes his hand, nodding when she sees the haze leave his eyes. She helps him stand up and they begin to run again.
Once they get near the water, Isilya shoves Armin through the crowd. She watches as he runs towards two other kids that a Garrison soldier had just shoved onto the boat. She lets out a shaky smile when she realizes that those two kids are Mikasa and Eren. Now that she knows those three are safer, she turns and runs back into the town, using her hooks as soon as there aren't any people in the way.
A 16-meter titan comes strolling around the corner to her right, causing Isilya to curse under her breath. She looks to her left and sees a 9-meter titan approaching. She lets out a sign and faces the two titans looming over her. "Care to dance, uglies?"
Isilya has slowly made her way back towards the inner wall of Maria. She had been able to make her way deeper into the center of the district for a while, but most of the people have made their way to the boats, so Isilya follows the titan as they follow their source of food. Isilya does her best to kill any titans that get within a few streets of the ships. But no matter what, more and more keep coming.
As Isilya slices the nape of a 10-meter titan, she hears crying in an alleyway near her.
"Sixty-three" Isilya mutters as she flies down into the alley. A young garrison soldier is carrying two small children in his arms. A woman who seems to be their mother has one arm around the soldier and another wrapped around a baby bundled in cloth. She limps by his side, trying to calm the children. The soldier freezes when he sees Isilya standing there with her cloak.
"It…it's you." The soldier states, though it sounds like a question. Isilya doesn't recognize him, but she nods. She grabs the two children from the man and tells him to pick up the woman. He snaps out of his amazement does as instructed as they run to the boats.
Isilya and the soldier are able to hand off the three kids to some people on one of the ships as it starts to drift away. The mother stays on land, crying, causing the children to cry harder.
Isilya clenches her teeth together as the mother falls to her knees. She wishes she had something to say that would help. Instead, she just places her hand on the woman's shoulder and points back to her children on the boat. The woman looks back up from her hands and sees her oldest child rocking the baby in his arms. The woman begins to cry more, but now with a small, sad smile on her face.
"Thank you." The woman mutters. Isilya barely hears her in-between her tears and the noise of the crowd. Isilya squeezes the woman's shoulder and turns to head back into the war zone.
A few of the Garrison soldiers by the gate begin to argue, catching Isilya's attention. Some of them demand that they close the gate before the titans can get through it into Wall Maria. Others argue that they can't leave people stuck here. Isilya watches as the gate begins to close.
"Wait." Isilya mumbles. Nobody hears her but herself. She stares at the titans flooding the town and then at the large group of people throwing themselves at the side of the boat, trying to hang onto it for the sake of their lives. The soldiers continue to argue. The civilians continue to scream and cry. Isilya stands frozen, unsure of which side she should be on. Save who they can and protect the majority inside of Wall Rose, or risk all of those lives to try and save everyone?
Before Isilya has time to decide, the soldiers begin to shout louder. Some of them point down the street and begin firing their canons. Isilya turns to see a strong-built titan running towards the Wall. The soldiers scream when their weapons don't seem to slow it down at all. Isilya's eyes widen as the titan slams it's shoulder into the gate that was almost closed. Pieces of the stone gate go flying through the air.
The screaming of more people makes Isilya spring back into action. Now, the choice of who to save doesn't matter. All that matters is doing what she can. And right now, she believes that the only thing she can do is kill as many titans as possible to hold off the attack as people make their way into Wall Rose.
Eventually, Isilya finds herself surrounded. Six titans close in around her from all sides. She takes a breath and darts above the slowest one and slices its nape. Continuing in the direction of her momentum, she swings through and under another's legs, slicing at its ankles until it falls forward. It claws at the buildings around it as it falls, landing on top of a smaller titan. As she glances at it for no more than a second, trying to decide if it's going to be able to move from under the other or not, a hand reaches out for her. She lets out a small grunt and shoots out a hook behind her, letting it pull her away from the hand. As the titan continues to reach for her, she shoots another hook into its shoulder and releases the one behind her. She cuts her way up its arm and makes quick work of its neck. As the titan falls, she attaches a hook to the nape of the one that was struggling to get up with its cut ankles. She finishes it off and jumps off of it's back, landing on the head of the titan under it.
"Hey, little monster," Isilya starts, raising her blades. "Goodbye, little monster." She finishes as she cuts clean through its nape. The two that are left reach out for her at the same time. She uses her gear to pull herself out of the way and watches as their hands slam into each other.
"How romantic." Isilya rolls her eyes, going to take out the knees of the faster one. As she does, another titan leaps out from behind a building on all fours, jaw wide open for her. Isilya quickly changes directions and watches as the quadrupedal titan bites the leg of the other one. It screeches but keeps its attention on Isilya, limping towards her. As she turns to make sure the slower titan is still where she thinks it is, the quadrupedal titan pushes the titan it had bit down to the ground, using it's back as a ramp as it falls, and jumps at her in the air. At the same time, the slower, larger titan reaches out for her. The quadrupedal titan gets in the way of its hand. Isilya's eyes widen as the smaller titan is hit in her direction. She shoots out a hook but can't avoid it in time. It's whole body slams into her and she goes flying.
Isilya crashes through the halfway destroyed roof of a house and lands on the stairs. She cries out as she rolls down, shooting out a hook in an attempt to stop herself. Her hook catches on the railing and Isilya's body comes to a stop. She tries to stand up, but lets out a cry of pain and slumps back onto the stairs. A shadow falls over her. When she looks up, the larger titan's head is coming into view. Behind it somewhere, she hears the roar of another titan. Cursing herself and most of this world, she weakly lifts her hands and creates a portal on the steps beneath her.
"Seventy-one" Isilya whispers as she rolls into the portal and onto Levi's bed in his old house in the Underground, closing the portal behind her and passing out from the pain. The screams of the people left behind in Shiganshina haunt her dreams.