Eren woke up the next day to his blaring alarm and Rivaille gone. After a few minutes of hazy 'being awake', Eren actually woke up, and got dressed. As an afterthought, he brushed his teeth.

Discovering he still had plenty of time (Rivaille must have set his alarm; usually Eren had only just woken up by now), Eren ambled slowly towards the mess hall. He let himself get lost in thought, reflecting on the events of the past few days.

I'm still a kaiju, and now everyone else knows that Ymir and Annie and the other two are too… And Rivaille's probably. Off doing top secret stuff I'm not allowed to know. Eren grumbled aloud. He glared at an offending rust-colored stain on the wall as he passed it.

Eren had just torn his eyes away from the wall, moodily searching for another spot to focus his hatred towards, when he felt an intense pressure behind his temples, and suddenly he heard Annie's voice, as if she were shouting from a long ways away.

Stop thinking so loudly, you'll alert them to your presence.

Eren wanted to scream.

No, shut up and listen. Hanji asked Ymir and I to keep in contact through you.

Eren furrowed his brows. Keep in contact…?

Yes. Now find her and tell her we've made it past point 3B.

…what.

Just repeat the message, Jaeger.

This is another one of those things I'm not allowed to know, isn't it, Eren thought gloomily.

Eren. Message. Hanji.

FINE fine I'll go give her the message just get out of my HEAD already.

Make me.

Scowling, Eren threw his entire mental willpower into a thick, heavy wall, completely with the impression of Annie's flattened face on the other side. Eren could have sworn he heard her laugh, but the pressure on his head instantly lightened up, fading into almost imperceptible background.

He added a couple of steel beams to his fortification, just in case.

He started stalking back down the hallway, at some point in his mental conversation having come to a halt, and continued fortifying his mental wall, alternating between thinking of bricks and whether or not he should inform Hanji before or after his breakfast. But then his stomach rumbled, and the decision was made for him—besides, the chances of him even being able to enter Hanji's lab and give her the message were close to none, because 'super secret stuff' was going on there and—no, Eren, stop it. You know why they can't tell you. You wouldn't want them to know, whatever it is they're planning. Especially if Annie means what I think she means…

Eren felt a pressure again, and scowled even deeper. Annie if you—

But the voice—or voices?—Eren heard, vaguely cobbled together syllables in the back of his mind, definitely weren't Annie. The pressure was the same, but—the garble soon straightened itself out, pressure increasing as it did so, until Eren was gasping and clutching at his head, his hands pressed vainly into his temples in an effort to alleviate the noise—

—good, then—

—the lost—

—it's listening—

—alive?!—

—ick, send—

—orders for—

"Eren!"

Eren gasped, pushing away the hands on his shoulders, and curled up tighter on himself. He focused solidly on stone, thick, garbled stone, smooth and solid and not a crack in sight—and then the voices faded.

"Eren!"

Eren blinked once, coming back into reality to find himself leaning against the wall and trembling. Mikasa looked down on him, her hand hovering a few inches away.

"Are you okay?" she asked, exhaling audibly.

"Yeah," Eren said, looking down at his shaking arm. "I—I think so."

"What… happened? Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, yeah… I'm fine. I'm. Fine. I. Mikasa," Eren said, looking straight at her, "I heard them."

Mikasa wrinkled her brow. "Heard who?"

"Them. The… the other kaiju." Eren shuddered, focused his mind to exclude everything that wasn't him. And doubled that effort.

Mikasa was silent for a moment. "You have to tell Commander Smith, at least."

Eren nodded. "Yeah… and I have a message for Hanji, too." At Mikasa's questioning look, Eren elaborated, "Annie told me, right before… them."

"Okay," Mikasa said. Then she stood up from her crouch, offering a hand to Eren. "Let's go."

Eren took her hand, embarrassed by the way his legs still shook a bit. Mikasa braced him up against her shoulder, and after a few seconds of resistance, Eren gave in and leaned against her.

"Commander Smith is probably in Hanji's lab, so if we go there we can get them both." Eren nodded in agreement.

"Wait, where's Armin?" he asked, suddenly aware of his friend's absence. Mikasa gave him a noncommittal noise in answer.

"I checked the barracks before I came to find you. He wasn't there."

"Oh."

"He's probably just in the mess hall," she said. Waiting for us was left unsaid.

"Right…"

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Eren shrugged Mikasa off about halfway down, gritting his teeth and ordering his body to comply with his non-shaky wishes.

Eren was the one who knocked on the door to Hanji's lab. He knocked again after a few seconds, and was finally greeted by a frazzled-looking Moblit.

"Oh, Eren, Mikasa, hello. What are you-?"

"Is Commander Smith here?" Eren asked quickly, trying to glance behind Moblit.

"Yes, he's with Hanji," Moblit replied. Eren nodded.

"I have a message for them."

"Oh. Oh. Right, let me just—HANJI."

Eren heard a muffled reply from inside the room.

"Eren's here! With a message!"

More muffled noises.

Moblit turned to face him and Mikasa. "Right, give me a moment, I'll go grab them, okay? I can't let you in right now, I hope you understand," he said, before shutting the door to a slit and leaving.

Eren stared moodily at the door, the adrenaline from earlier beginning to ebb and making him suddenly aware that his heart had been beating much faster than normal. He took a deep breath, checked up once more on his mental wall, and exhaled. He looked to Mikasa, who was toying with her scarf, looking at him with concern.

He rolled his eyes. "I'm fine, Mikasa, really…"

"I know," she replied, her expression not changing one bit. Eren rolled his eyes again, looking back at the door as it began to open again, and Hanji and Commander Smith exited, bringing the door shut behind them.

"So! Moblit tells us you've got a message?" Hanji said, looking eagerly at Eren. Somewhat reassured by the normalcy that was Hanji's slightly-unhinged-ness, Eren nodded.

"And something else, too," he tacked on.

"Oh?" Hanji asked, then waved her hand. "Message first, something else after!"

"Annie said to tell you they were at… B3?" Eren said, his confidence wavering as he realize he couldn't remember what Annie had said as well as he'd thought. Hanji, at least, seemed not to care.

"3B! They're at 3B already! That's—oh, oh, oh! That's great, I just, where's my calc—"

"Hanji, I do believe Jaeger has something else to say?" Commander Smith said, laying a hand on Hanji's shoulder. He turned his bemused expression on Eren once Hanji had calmed down.

"I… I heard them. The other kaiju." Eren clenched his fists and looked down at the floor. "And I think… the impression I got was that they heard me, too."

Hanji and Erwin exchanged a look, Hanji having considerably sobered up. Hanji opened her mouth as if to say something, but Smith cut her off.

"Do they know where you are?"

Eren shook his head. "I don't think so. They… confusion. They weren't expecting me to be—to be alive. I don't think."

"Are you still practicing your mental walls? Rivaille—"

"I am," Eren said, "but they were still weak because I talked to Annie."

"Ah." There was a pause, in which Smith and Hanji exchanged another look. "Thank you for telling us, Eren. Have you had breakfast yet?"

"…no."

"Why don't you go do that? Mikasa, can you take him with you?"

Mikasa nodded sharply and turned on her heel to face Eren, reaching out an arm. He slapped it away.

"I'm fine," he snapped. Mikasa leveled him a look that made him instantly regret the action. They walked out of the lab in silence, Eren still absentmindedly piling bricks. Once the door was closed behind them, Eren muttered 'sorry' to Mikasa.

For a moment she didn't reply, and Eren was worried he'd seriously offended her. Then, finally, she spoke, her voice low and level. "I know you don't like being out of the loop, Eren, but all of us are. You have to realize that. Even Armin only has a general idea of what's going on. You're… not the only one, okay? So."

"Yeah, I'm…" Eren swallowed thickly. "Sorry. I'm sorry for acting like a jerk. I know why, I just wish it… wasn't."

"I know." After a second, Eren's stomach rumbled again. Mikasa smiled faintly at him, tugging her scarf. "How does breakfast sound?"

"Sounds great," Eren said, ruefully.

Once they got to the mess hall, Eren looked around for Armin, frowning mildly. "Mikasa, didn't you say Armin was here?"

Mikasa looked up from where she was loading her tray full of whatever was left of the food—breakfast ended in fifteen minutes, after all. "What?"

"Armin?"

Mikasa turned to look out at the remaining still-occupied tables; there was no long-haired blond in sight. "That's weird. Maybe he already finished and left to try and find us?"

"Hmm," Eren replied. Then he shrugged. Armin might have already finished and gone to work on something elsewhere—Eren wasn't altogether too concerned. And, well… the food was calling to him. So he ate, neither him nor Mikasa really feeling the need for words.

They found Armin after breakfast, as they headed back towards the labs—Eren to find Rivaille and ask what he should do, Mikasa because she was Mikasa. And also had nothing to do training-wise, since her co-pilot was a kaiju. And at location 3B. Whatever that meant.

"Oh, hi," Armin said, doing the twitchy thing he always did when he was sneaking around where he wasn't necessarily supposed to be. Eren narrowed his eyes.

"Hi. You been sneaking around?" he asked seriously, but grinned afterwards to show Armin he wasn't serious. Armin twitched again.

"Uh. No."

Eren contemplated Armin for a moment, before sighing loudly. "It's something I'm not allowed to know about, isn't it."

Armin nodded sheepishly, and Eren pretended to collapse in his arms. "I hate this."

"We know," Armin said, smiling guiltily down at Eren. "Sorry."

"S'not your fault. Anyways, I needed to see if Rivaille was around, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing…"

"Well you're in fucking luck then, aren't you," said a voice from the other end of the hall. Eren, Armin, and Mikasa all turned to look as Rivaille, accompanied by Mike, strolled towards them.

"Oh, uh, hello," Eren said, faintly aware of Armin and Mikasa saluting behind him.

"Mike, d'you think you've got a job for the brat?"

Eren furrowed his brows in confusion for a moment, before remembering that Mike was also chief engineer in the shatterdome. Mike rubbed his chin.

"Well… we're needing to outfit the jaegers for—a bit differently. You've had basic jaegertech, right? Nuts and bolts? Screw this here and that there?"

"Uh… yes?"

"Mmhm. Go to the new hangars, ground floor. Ask for Nanaba. Tell them Mike sent an extra pair of hands," Mike said decisively.

"Yessir," Eren replied, snapping to attention out of instinct. Rivaille snickered quietly at him, and Eren retorted with sticking out his tongue.

"Would I be allowed to go as well?" Mikasa asked suddenly. "I'm in the same predicament as Eren, essentially…"

Mike nodded.

"Right then," Rivaille said, with the air of infinite boredom that only he could muster, "We'll be off. Don't forget to take a shit on your breaks."

The ensuing awkward silence appeared to go unnoticed by both Rivaille and Mike, and they continued walking towards Hanji's lab, Rivaille brushing his shoulder against Eren's as he passed.

"Um. I guess I'll see you two later? I'm heading down to Hanji's lab too, actually…"

"Oh, yeah, I guess. Bye, then," Eren said, waving a hand at Armin as he followed Mike and Rivaille.

"To the new hangars?" Mikasa asked after a second.

"Yeah."

Once arrived, they were warmly greeted and ushered onto the team, with Nanaba informing them that more hands were always welcome. They were assigned jobs and told to get to work, orders with which Eren happily complied. They spent the rest of the day working, except for meal breaks, and upon dismissal, promised to return the next day as well.

By the end of the second day, time was already starting to blur together. The repetitive motions of assisting the jaeger reconstruction teams ate the hours away, and the focus required made sure Eren didn't have time to think of anything else. Eren welcomed it.

The only disturbance was the arrival of the alphanumerical combination 6D, which Eren duly relayed to Hanji before returning to work, tightening the bolts with a bit more ferocity than usual. This time, he didn't hear any other voices.

The third day, Hanji tried to run Mikasa solo in the jaeger—when questioned, Hanji merely shrugged and said she had an idea, but that would only work if Mikasa could do it.

Mikasa, much to no one's surprise, had merely steeled her gaze and gone for it. And made it, too, for the entirety of Hanji's ten-minute trial run—though, afterwards, as soon as she disengaged from the jaeger, she had crumpled to the ground, breathing heavily, and scared Eren into racing along the boardwalk full-tilt.

Hanji had followed shortly behind, asking Mikasa a plethora of questions—"How did it feel?" "Do you think you can control it?" "How long will you be good for?" "Based on my calculations it'll take longer than ten minutes—"

"I can do it," Mikasa wearily replied, half-hanging in Eren's arms. "Now I know what to expect."

"But—"

"Eren. Trust me," Mikasa said, nonetheless smiling softly at Eren. After a second of eye contact, he nodded.

"Okay."

"You're sure, Mikasa? Because if you can't, say so now, otherwise… I mean this plan that we're running requires certain things and if you can't—"

"Hanji. I said I'm sure. I'm strong. I can do it." So saying, Mikasa stood up fully, pushing herself off of Eren. She teetered for a moment before catching herself, her eyes as hard and determined as ever. Eren couldn't even imagine trying to pilot without Rivaille by his side; the machinery around him was already so heavy even while spread across two minds, let alone one. He thought, not for the first time, that his adopted sister was truly strong. Insane, crazy, but strong.

Fourth day, they ran a solo trial on Historia. She fainted after a few seconds, blood leaking slowly from her nose down to her chin, but when she woke up, her eyes were as hard as Mikasa's.

"Sorry, I—sorry," she said, voice breaking, her eyes finally losing their steely determination.

An insistent nudging at the edge of Eren's consciousness alerted him to the presence of someone—someone vaguely Ymir-y, and so Eren chanced at bringing his walls down a little bit.

Oi, fuckface, tell Historia she's the best.

Ymir—

Do it. Do it right now.

FINE.

"Historia…" Eren mumbled, aware of how everyone's eyes snapped to him for interrupting… whatever had been going on while he'd been busy with Ymir. "Sorry. Um. Ymir says you're the best." Historia broke out into a wide smile upon hearing that.

"Tell her the same, if you're talking to her, please," she said.

Ymir, did you—

Yeah. Thanks. Anyways, tell Glasses we should be hitting A1 tomorrow.

"Hanji, Ymir says they'll be hitting A1 tomorrow."

Cool, bye. Historia I miss her, too.

"And Ymir says she misses Historia."

Hanji, however, was no longer paying attention, looking at something she's drawn up on her electronic notebook. Eren, Historia, Mikasa, and Moblit stood around awkwardly, waiting, until Moblit cleared his throat loudly.

"Um…"

"Hm?" Hanji asked, looking up. "Oh, right, yes, thank you so much, Historia, you can un-suit now, I have to…" Hanji trailed off into under-her-breath mutterings, oblivious to the rest of them staring at her.

"Sorry about that…" Moblit said, moving to assist Historia. "That's… just how she is."

"No kidding…"

Eren spent the rest of the day on the hangar 'floor', hanging suspended against the jaeger's hull by a multitude of cables as he bolted wires and small plates of metal into place. He went to bed with a goodnight kiss from Rivaille and the vague notion that he was probably going to be sore again tomorrow.

Rivaille woke up with unusual rapidity, even for him, the alarm off and himself on his feet before the motions had really registered. Rivaille drew a deep breath, then shook his head and began to go through his morning ritual. He was drying off his face—the final step—when he heard the distinctive noises of Eren waking up. Rivaille smiled a bit to himself as he folded his towel and slotted it precisely back into the rack, glad that Eren existed, really.

Which was a stupid sentiment, but, as Eren blinked sleepily up at him and smiled, Rivaille couldn't help but feel that it was a well-placed one.

"Whur yugoin?" Eren mumbled, half-burying his face back into his pillow. Rivaille leaned down and pressed a kiss to Eren's temple, breathing in his smell and wondering at how it didn't repulse him.

"Talking to Erwin," he replied. "I'll see you later."

"Mmfhfgh."

Rivaille took that as his cue to leave, shutting the door quietly on his way out. He walked to Erwin's office more out of instinct than anything else, comforting himself with the thought that Erwin would probably have coffee, considering he'd called Rivaille in a full hour before they normally went. He fiddled a bit with the volume control on his walkie before he arrived at the door.

He rapped twice, then entered, not bothering to wait for a sign of permission.

"Erwin—eh?"

The office was empty. Rivaille looked around, noticing a thermos on the desk with a stickie note taped to it. Based on the illegibility, Rivaille concluded it was Hanji's and not Erwin's.

Went to meet the ladies, they're back early. Meet us in the back lab~!

Trust Hanji to use little swirlies. Rivaille petulantly grabbed the thermos, neatly folding and then shredding the stickie note. Once that had been thrown in the trash, he took a sip of the coffee thermos, and sighed appreciatively.

The coffee was already three-quarters finished by the time Rivaille arrived to the back lab—it wasn't a secret laboratory, per se, but the chances of anyone managing to navigate through Hanji's lab and finding the door to the back was… well, not high.

Rivaille rapped on the door, this time waiting until he heard the acknowledgement before entering. Hanji was standing off to the side, looking like she was about to burst, holding two things that looked like cameras in her hands. Erwin was sitting on a stool to the right, and directly in front of him, Annie and Ymir were sitting oh chairs in human form, devouring some bread.

"So what'd I miss?" Rivaille asked, fully entering the room and closing the door behind him. Annie looked up at him and said nothing, but Ymir didn't pause in her eating.

"The portal of sorts is a three-day journey, approximately. However, only one day was made on land, the other two require swimming—"

"Which is what we expected, based on the maps! The 'ocean' really is that big! And now that we've got the jaegers about half-waterproofed, it'll only take a few more days to secure the final fittings, and possibly add a boat-like component, for ease of travel, and—"

"Yeah, but the problem is," Ymir interrupted, talking around a mouthful of bread, "that the closer you get to the portal, the more kaiju there'll be around." Next to her, Annie nodded.

"How many is 'more'?" Erwin asked.

Ymir shrugged. "Twenty? Fifty? I've no idea what the fuck the Elders are gonna do. They're not the fighters, they just direct shit. We fighters don't know shit."

"Mm." Erwin was silent for a moment. "Hanji, how many jaegers do we have that are waterproofed?"

"Well, at the moment Freedom Wing and Cerberus are the only two that are completely outfitted. Topaz Maelstrom and Springles are about three-quarters of the way done, and Acrobat Historica, Emerald Monsoon, Raven Blue, and Garrison Rose about halfway…"

"Do we trust all the pilots?" Rivaille asked, fixing Erwin with a look and purposefully finishing off his coffee.

Erwin steepled his fingers. "For those jaegers, yes. But we'll need more… I'll send out word to Klorva after we're done here."

Ymir wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and Rivaille suppressed a shudder. "You know you also have three kaiju on your side, right. Three intelligent kaiju. The rest of them are all dumbasses, 'cause making a thing that can think takes more effort."

"Ye—"

"SPEAKING OF!" Hanji shouted, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Now that we know that Mikasa can also pilot solo, I've had a great idea that would allow Annie and Eren to be able to transform! You build a switch-interface, where when it's switched on, the ejection pod with Annie or Eren ejects, but then the neural interface doesn't completely disconnect from the other pilot- it just switches into something a bit more like the Unicorns have! And if we wanted to make it work for Historia and Ymir, both pods would eject but Historia's would be a mini-Unicorn of sorts so she can still get back to safety! I mean we'd lose Acrobat Historica, but if it helps us win…"

"How long will that take?" Erwin asked.

"If I get the schematics done within the next, say, hour or so… especially—can I have Armin for that? He gets things. But then the 'bots could manufacture them overnight, and installation could begin tomorrow… test runs… two days? Three?"

"If we turned all manpower, even the crew teams towards the waterproofing?"

"That'd still take a while… oh. Three days as well…"

"We'll plan on moving out in four days, then. That should give us time to get everything in order. Hanji, make sure all the jaegers are properly outfitted. Annie, Ymir, you can finish up here, then go get some rest. Thank you."

The two kaiju nodded, and Annie mumbled what might have been a 'you're welcome'. Erwin nodded back, then turned, raising an eyebrow at Rivaille, who tilted his head towards the door through which Hanji had disappeared. They walked out together, heading back through Hanji's lab and towards Erwin's office.

"So. Four days?"

"We can't afford to make it longer. Every day we wait is another day they could decide to attack full force. They already know Eren's alive, who knows what else they know—we're working under an assumption that they're going to wait, but who knows if that's right?"

"D'you think we can manage that?"

"…I think we have to try."

"Mm."

Erwin reached his office door before Rivaille did, opening it and letting Rivaille pass through first. As was customary, Rivaille took a seat on the edge of Erwin's desk. Rivaille wasn't really needed at the moment; but Eren was probably still asleep—the fucker—and Rivaille didn't want to get anywhere near Hanji when she was in one of her creative moods (how Moblit did it, Rivaille hoped never to know).

Once Erwin had taken a seat, he stared off into space for a few seconds before standing back up and beginning to pace.

"Four days… if Hanji gets her run of things with engineering—I'll let Mike know to inform the crews to defer… Rico…" Erwin pulled out his electronic pad, and Rivaille heard the distinctive startup noise of the Inter-wall Information Network. Erwin typed for a bit, then put the pad down, resuming his pacing. "If we follow the same route we instructed Annie and Ymir—formations… numbers?"

It was interesting, Rivaille thought absently as he began to tune Erwin out, how the two people he considered his closest friends, Hanji and Erwin, could both spend hours at a time muttering at themselves under their breath. At least Erwin doesn't try to involve you in whatever he's planning…

Erwin continued talking, and Rivaille continued not listening, for at least another ten or fifteen minutes, Rivaille sincerely regretting having drunk the thermos empty earlier.

A knock on the door brought Erwin's monologue to a halt and snapped Rivaille out of his zoned place.

"Who the fuck is coming to see you at"—Rivaille briefly glanced at the tacky-as-fuck wall clock on the wall behind the desk—"seven thirty in the fucking morning?"

"Good question," Erwin said softly. Then, louder, "Enter!"

A familiar face entered, topped off by two-toned hair. Jean saluted.

"Sir! I—I wanted to request permission to continue piloting," Jean said, staring fixedly ahead, fist pressed over his heart. Erwin glanced to Rivaille.

"Kirstein, correct? Delta Mustang?"

"Yessir."

"…it is not even past breakfast yet. Why are you asking now?" Erwin said. Rivaille narrowed his eyes at both Erwin and Jean. Erwin was dodging the question, which Rivaille had learned through experience meant he was trying to procure answers to unposed questions.

"I want to take part in the upcoming mission."

"What makes you believe there is an upcoming mission?"

"Look, I might not know what's going on, but for some reason almost all the jaegers are getting reworked on, and Jaeger and Armin have been acting weird, and when Armin acts weird you know something's up—but that aside, all the engineering crews know something's up. Practically everyone does. You don't work on five jaegers at once. Especially not ones that barely sustained any damage in the first place… and Annie and Ymir are—uh. Back." Jean had fallen out of his salute in the process of speaking, and now simply stood in front of the two of them.

"Jaeger told you, didn't he?" Jean didn't reply, instead looking down at his feet. Rivaille rolled his eyes, more in exasperation than anger. "That asshole. I told him not to tell."

"It… wasn't just him. Ymir, too."

"That aside," Erwin interjected, "why is it imperative that you pilot?"

"Because—because I have to. I need to—I have to—" he paused and drew a breath. "Because I've trained for this for years. And the first time we went out, he—he died. And. I don't want that to be my only time, I can't—I just. Please. I won't—I won't fail again, I won't—"

Rivaille noticed that his hand would often come up to right below his collarbone before Jean would seemingly notice it and forcibly move his hand back down. It wasn't until Rivaille mimicked the motion that he understood—his and Petra's dogtags were cool against his fingers.

"Let him," Rivaille said, cutting across Jean's pleas and addressing Erwin. Erwin shot him a look that read somewhere between angry and betrayed, but Rivaille shrugged. He understood all too well the compulsion, the need, to get back in a jaeger and reclaim that power, take revenge, and, in the upcoming mission's case, take back their world. For themselves. And for those who wouldn't be able to experience it.

"He doesn't even have a co-pilot," Erwin argued. "The amount of time it would take to train—"

"Please, sir," Jean said, looking abashed for the first time since he'd stepped foot in the office. "I, uh. Well. I kind of forced Armin into checking the databases for the compatibility tests, and finding who my runner-up was, and… well, it was Armin, sir." When his proclamation was met with silence, Jean hastily continued. "And I wanted to be sure, so I may have also made Armin spar with me multiple times and—well, he's not Marco, but it's close. We're drift compatible, definitely, sir. And Armin is the smartest cadet—er, new soldier in the shatterdome, he'll pick up so fast on anything he doesn't already know about being in the jaegers."

Erwin sighed deeply. Rivaille recognized it as his conceding sigh—he sighed the exact same way every time he agreed to give Hanji more money to keep conducting her experiments.

"I suppose," he intoned, "that you've already thought about the problem of jaegers? Namely, that Delta Mustang is still almost halved and due to the upcoming mission, there will be no time to repair her?"

"We can use Aegis, sir. Reiner and Berthold's old jaeger. I—heard that they wouldn't be needing it anymore."

"You've heard correctly, Kirstein." Erwin lapsed into a pensive silence long enough that Jean started to squirm.

"Please, Commander Smith. I have to—I can't just sit by while others go out and—"

Erwin sighed mightily, pinching his nose between forefinger and thumb.

"Yes, very well. We'll have a test-run for you and Arlert in…" Erwin glanced at the clock. "In forty-five minutes. I'll leave it up to you to organize a command crew—either Aegis' or Delta's will be fine. Have Arlert outfitted in standard practice gear… we can work out a proper piloting suit later, if you two are a good match."

"Sir yes sir!" Jean said, saluting again, his voice cracking. Rivaille saw the look of relief in his eyes, and nodded slightly to himself. Jean left immediately after his dismissal, his footsteps picking up speed the second the door was shut behind him.

After a moment's silence, Erwin gave Rivaille a look of amused resignment. "I wasn't really counting on that."

"Well. You have another jaeger now."

"Yes, but I was hoping to assign Arlert to command…"

"Don't see why he can't do both. You do."

"Mm."

Rivaille sat around for a bit longer, eventually getting up and making his way down to the kitchens, in search of more coffee. He got into a discussion with the kitchen staff about the merits of black versus with sugar, and by the time he returned to Erwin's office, Erwin was already preparing to go to the hangar and watch the test-run.

"Out of curiosity, Rivaille, do you think Kirstein and Arlert can pilot together?" Erwin asked as they vacated the office.

Rivaille shrugged. "Wouldn't've pegged them for it, but."

"You see yourself in him, don't you."

Rivaille tried his best to give Erwin the stink eye, but as Erwin was resolutely not making eye contact, the effect was limited. "No. I just think the kid deserves a chance."

That got Erwin to look at him. Erwin raised an eyebrow in self-defense. "I see."

As they walked into the command room, they were surprised by the number of people that were present. A full team, summoned in just over half an hour—

"Hoh, not bad," Rivaille intoned before stealing the nearest free chair and claiming it for himself. Erwin, as was customary, kept standing.

"Commander Smith, sir!" a soldier said, as soon as they noticed Erwin was amongst them. "Jean and Armin would like me to pass on the message that they are ready to go any time. Already locked in, just waiting the order to drift.

Erwin nodded solemnly.

"Alright then. Initiate the drift sequence."

A button was pressed.

"Initiating drift sequence in three… two… one… Drift sequence, initiated."

Practically the entire command floor waited with bated breath as the images on the screen flickered in and out of alignment. Finally, it settled, and the automated voice dinged back into life: "Neural handshake, successful." The command floor cheered.

Erwin leaned over the person sitting at the desk, grabbing the microphone and speaking into it. "Your arms are free, try a few movements there, just to make sure."

"Yes sir."

There was a loud clink, and then Aegis Colossi's arms began to move, rising smoothly into a fighting stance, then rotating into another one, finally coming to rest with both metallic fists held loosely in front of its body.

Erwin waited a moment before speaking again. "Bring the jaeger back to resting, please," he said. He watched as the jaeger righted the slight tilt its torso had taken, hands coming down to rest near its thighs. "You've done well. Consider yourselves pilots, now."

"Shall we disengage, sir?"

"Bring them out of the drift, yes."

Erwin walked over to Rivaille.

"Make sure that Arlert is notified that his piloting suit will be ready tomorrow morning, I'll go write the production line now."

"Righto," Rivaille replied, mock-saluting and plopping back down into the chair he'd commandeered. He waited until Erwin was safely out of the room before using it as a spinny chair, twirling around and trying to keep his coffee as steady as possible.

He wondered if Eren was aware of what had just happened. Probably not, since he was working with the repair crews. They were generally the last to receive information along the grape vine hierarchy, simply because they were rather hard to track down. What with the whole hanging thing and all. Rivaille shrugged to himself. Even if Eren can't, I might as pass on the message and congratulate the fucking brats myself.

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Full title: Testing Days, or: Return of Delta Mustang

Sorry this took me so long ^^;