Surprisingly, Armin had gotten a good night of sleep for once. Despite the countless nights of fretting and researching that had robbed him of rest for the past month or so, and despite his worry for the expedition that was set to take place, today he'd slept just fine.
It was more than a bit odd to him, all things considered, but there was a strange sense of calm that had washed over him.
Hanji had told him that it was fine, that it was normal and some people were just like that, but he still couldn't help but continue to feel odd about it. After all today was the day that they were heading back outside the Walls. The day where he'd have to face those beasts that had taken nearly everything away from him twice once more and pray that this was not the third time.
Today was the day that they'd possibly be bringing one of them home.
Yet even as he untacked his horse and led it over to the rest of Hanji's squad for transport he didn't still didn't fear the same spike of fear he had felt when he was first told of the expedition.
He was...well, for a lack of a better word he was excited, almost eager to head outside the Walls and face the titan that he had been practically obsessing over during the past month, and while he kept reminding himself that every expedition carried unknown factors and was far from easy he couldn't help but feel somewhat safe.
Every member heading out on this expedition was highly skilled and had been trained for this type of thing and including Trost everyone had at the very least seen a titan before, meaning that it was far less likely for anyone to freeze on sight, an unfortunately common occurrence outside the Walls.
Besides, with the way the formation was set up it was highly unlikely that the less skilled members would ever even get to participate in combat.
They were using a circular formation with Captain Levi's squad leading the formation with Squad Leader Hanji and Mike's squads flanking them from both sides with multiple separate elite squads in the back, each squad having one or more rookies.
Two supply carts were set in the center-although what their purpose wasn't quite clear to Armin yet as Hanji had already assured him that the expedition was unlikely to be longer than three days-and about three kilometers out on each side were the spotter teams, tasked with scoping out the area and any possible titans.
It was a setup that had apparently drastically lowered casualties in the past and if Armin was being honest it was a fairly solid plan, even accounting for the inexperience of the rookies with fighting titans as each of them had been set up as the flare holders, tasked with holding communication with the other squads while they were at that great distance.
Unsurprisingly it was also the job he had been given, Armin remembered as he patted his side bag which contained all of his color rounds, each packed together tightly in order to minimize the space they took up.
From his brief meeting with the rest of the 104th at the last dinner he'd attended Armin had found out that Jean, Connie, Annie, Reiner, and Sasha all having been stuck with the job while Bertholdt escaped due to the fact that he was stationed in the same squad as Reiner.
Which left Mikasa as the outlier, as per usual, as she was stationed in Captain Levi's squad due to her situation as an apparent prodigy as well as her actions in Trost, and if Armin was being honest that was what worried him most about this entire mission.
Though the Captain's squad was somewhat protected by necessity they would still be at the very forefront of the field and would most likely be the first ones to engage in combat with the Rogue titan if necessary.
But it was going to be fine. He knew better than anyone that Mikasa was fully deserving of her seat within the squad and was more than strong enough to hold her own even without a highly talented squad backing her up.
Commander Erwin wouldn't have placed her there unless he truly thought she had the needed skills and he was almost certain that Captain Levi wouldn't have accepted her as a part of his squad unless he agreed, so there was no need to worry.
Besides, he wouldn't even be that far from her or away from her for too long, as his squad's path was set to interfere with her's once they reached the forest of giant trees. He was supposed to meet up with her then.
('Just like how Eren was supposed to live through Trost.' A small voice in the back of his mind whispered. 'Just like he was supposed to join the Survey Corps, supposed to have been heading beyond the Walls on this expedition rather than rotting in a mass grave full of-')
Speaking of, the fact that they were even heading towards the forest of giant trees was news to Armin as he had originally been told by Hanji that they were planning to head straight out from the front of Trost's gates utilizing the horse pulleys but apparently some recent events had changed their whole course.
Due to a lack of data their original course plan had been to simply head out straight from the front of Trost until Wall Maria was visible and then spotting along that area as they ran north until they were directly out front of the Karanese district and then heading back through that gate, assuming that they Rogue titan was not spotted.
It would had been a gamble and relied entirely on the hope that the Rogue titan had run left and not past the gates of the previously named district, however it was their best bet at the time.
Yet with the titan's most recent appearance Vice Squad Leader Moblit and Hanji had been able to all but exactly pinpoint where the titan could possibly be, as the fact that it had been able to run up to the Walls twice in under a day and had ran in the same direction both times was fairly telling.
Based on the direction on which he had run they had theorized that the titan was likely taking refuge within the vast expanse of trees, which also may have been the reason why it had not been spotted within the past five years. (Although why not before then was still a mystery)
Regardless, it was still a far better option than simply picking a direction and choosing so Armin was appreciative of the change, though he wasn't exactly able to share this sentiment.
After the public announcement of the planned expedition route he'd been left to fend for himself on the veterans side, being watched by Captain Levi for once as Hanji had been forced to attend some sort of legal briefing-and although they had tried to convince him that it had nothing to do with him or the Rogue titan Armin knew that it most certainly was-so he was mostly stuck hovering around the older man with no idea of how or if he should start a conversation.
And so rather than chatting amicably like he had planned, Armin was forced to simply stare straight ahead as Commander Erwin gave out positions and duties that he had already heard, pointedly avoiding eye contact.
Although logically he knew that the meeting was only around half an hour long, by the time Commander Erwin began to read off his closing statements it felt as if he had been standing there for far longer, his feet already beginning to ache from being in the same spot for far too long.
Still, he watched and waited as the people began to file out of the clearing, barely sparing him a glance as he stood and waited for Captain Levi to make the first let him know that it was fine to leave now.
Yet as the crowd thinned out it became apparent that Levi had no intention on leaving, simply staring forward at the podium on the small stage, brows furrowed and arms crossed. So once the crowd became little more than small friends groups conversing Armin began to sweat.
Was this a test? Did the Captain want him to do something? Because if so, sweet Sina he had no idea what it could be.
And so he waited, locking his eyes on the podium as well and stealing glances every so often just to see if the other man had begun to move.
After what felt like an extraordinarily long time he decided that fine, at this point he should just bite the bullet and ask why the hell they were just standing here even though the speech was so clearly over and so he turned his head, coming face to face with-
"Kid, why the hell are you still here?"
Armin snapped his jaw shut, his question catching in the back of his throat as his Captain stared him down, clearly expecting an answer that Armin wasn't prepared to give.
"Ah-well, I was just...I thought that since you're um…" he spat out, struggling with words for a moment before taking a deep breath to regain his bearings. "Since you have taken over my observation today due to Section Leader Hanji being absent I believed that I would not be able to leave until you left or gave the order, sir."
He waited with bated breath as Captain Levi simply blinked back at him before averting his eyes with a quizzical, "Is that so?" Almost sounding as if he'd-no, there was no way that he'd forgotten that he was supposed to be on observation duty.
"Well I can't exactly supervise you if I'm walking away, now can I?"
"Ah, I guess so." Armin mumbled, beginning to walk out of the clearing. He really didn't know how to respond to Captain Levi, and the man himself wasn't making figuring that out any easier, so Armin simply stuck to responding for now.
This still didn't seem to be the greatest course of action though, as after a minute or two of walking in silence he could see that the man was becoming visibly agitated. So he decided to take a risk, breaking the silence.
"So I, um, saw that Mikasa is on your squad."
"Ackerman?"
"Yes, she's-well, I've known her for a long time, sir."
Levi sped up a bit, overtaking Armin as headquarters came into view, briefly pausing to take a look at his face.
"You worried?"
Armin gave a small smile. "A bit sir, if I'm to be honest."
"I understand." Levi nodded, turning back to face what was ahead of him. "But you know she wouldn't be there if we had any doubts about her abilities."
"I know, I know, it's just…unexpected." Armin reasoned, finally beginning to relax a bit. "I'm still kind of in shock over how much of a change the expedition went under in the past week, but that has really been my only hang up so far."
Levi froze, and Armin had barely been able to react quickly enough to avoid crashing into the smaller man's back. Shit had he done something wrong?
"I mean, I'm certainly happy that we have a more clear route now as to be honest I didn't particularly like the chances we were taking before-"
Captain Levi whipped around to face him, a glare fixed on his face. "What did you just say."
"I um-I mean no disrespect really!" Armin backpedaled. Walls, what had he said wrong? "It's just that with the original plan it was kind of-"
"The fuck do you mean original plan? Who the fuck told you about that?"
Armin just blinked at him for a moment. Did...did Captain Levi not know?
No, that was impossible. He was Commander Erwin's second in command, his most trusted soldier aside from Hanji, so there was no way that he hadn't been given the original orders.
So then why…?
"Um...well Squad leader Hanji told me a few weeks ago, back before the Wall incident-"
Armin was cut off once more as Levi let out a loud sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose and running his fingers along his eye sockets.
"Of course it was shitty glasses who told you, why do I even fucking bother." He mumbled, and Armin got the impression that it was more to himself than anything. "Listen-kid-you weren't supposed to know about that."
"Huh?"
"Erwin's expedition paths, well, really any part of Erwin's plans to change faster than a cadet who's late to roll call, which is mostly good. Out in the field you've gotta be flexible. You work with the shit you're given and build off from there, understand?"
They sat in silence for a moment before Armin realized 'oh he expects an answer!' and nodded his head.
"When you're out there-" Levi made a vague hand gesture behind him "-knowing that plans can change at any time is good, and so is knowing that they don't always change due to some serious shit happening, but the problem is that you newbies don't know that."
"You little shits assume that every time Erwin decides to move even an inch to the left it's because the mission has become a complete failure and you're all about to die, and don't even try to tell me you got that kind of experience in Trost because you know damn well that this is different."
Armin hadn't been planning on saying anything but he still raised his eyebrows at the statement.
"So what do you think would have happened if Erwin had given out the previous plan and all of it's dirty details way back when it was still in progress? What do you think it would have caused?"
"Distrust?"
Although the glare on his face didn't fully lift, Armin caught the corners of his mouth relaxing, so he took that as a win.
"Close, but no dice." Levi told him, ushering Armin to slide out of the way as people began to enter the brick hallway. "Panic. It would cause most of you guys to panic and believe that Erwin may not have all the details down, causing more of you idiots to break formation and fuck things up even more and then we'd have a real problem on our hands."
Ah, Armin was starting to get it now.
He thought back to Trost, having watched squad after squad desert as more information came in. Listening to the chaos as nobody could decide which orders to follow as they seemed to change every few minutes.
And while he was very much aware that the two situations were different, this being a planned event with people who were used to this type of thing, it would still have to account for the same struggles.
"So don't worry about that shit. We run on trust here, so don't ever forget that."
Maybe Captain Levi was actually a bit kinder than he came off as.
"Yes sir!"
Despite the nervous energy that had spread throughout the squad the moment the Karanese district gate had gone out of sight, from what Armin could tell the mission was going well.
Exceptionally well.
They'd been riding for around an hour and a half, if his judgment was correct, and while he had been told not to expect much action due to this position the sheer lack of anything was starting to become concerning.
So far the spotter teams had shot nothing but green flares, each round leaving faint streaks through the air behind them as the formation continued to move forward at a breakneck pace, and while Armin was more than aware that green meant everything was good he couldn't help the nervous pit that continued to grow in his stomach every time another was fired.
He responded in kind every time, letting the other squads know that things were fine on their end as well before turning his focus back to Hanji and the situation at hand.
Something was off.
Armin couldn't quite put his finger on it, but from what he could tell this many green flares at this point in the expedition wasn't normal given the fact that his stash had already been heavily depleted and the uneasiness of the squad surrounding him.
He watched as they twitched with every new flare, hands inching back towards their blades or simply being placed on the heavy metal of their maneuver gear, reminding themselves it was there.
His tongue felt heavy as the unasked question of, "Is something wrong?" burned upon it, but he couldn't bring himself to ask. Knowing that if he did Hanji would likely just smile back at him and ask why he thought that.
Yet with every new burst of green the tensions of the group seemed to rise, motions becoming just a bit more urgent. The casual scanning of the area becoming just a bit more frantic.
And so he swallowed down his fear, knowing that ultimately he couldn't do much at this point but trust that the Commander had thought of this being a possibility, or even planned for it, and continued to ride.
Still, the absolute lack of any titans continued to plague his thoughts. The sheer oddness of the situation refusing to let him forget about it.
After all, he'd never heard of any sort of expedition where the Survey Corps just hadn't encountered any titans. Ones where there were very few and in between, sure, but even then by this point in the expedition they were sure to have seen at least a few.
Which meant that there was something different about this expedition, a new factor that made this one so different, and it wasn't hard to think of what that could be. Yet to assume that left far more questions than it answered.
Just as it had been for the past month, the Rogue titan made such a convenient and simple solution and yet applying that solution opened up so many new worlds of questions, each with far more difficult answers.
The main one right now being if the Rogue titan was what was currently causing the lack of titans, why hadn't this occurred earlier?
Assuming that it was the Rogue titan and nothing else that meant that theoretically a timeframe for when the Rogue titan had appeared could easily be made by recognizing when the last normal expedition was and comparing that to when it had first been spotted.
A process that sounded so easy in theory, but ran into one major bump in practice.
The last major expedition had taken place leading up to and during Trost, meaning by that logic the Rogue titan would have had to have appeared during that time period, and even then that didn't make much sense, although Armin supposed that they still really didn't know how titans were created, so it could have been entirely plausible.
Still, he found it hard to believe that a whole new titan, especially one as different looking as the Rogue could be created in a fairly heavily populated area and nobody had noticed, but that was the least problematic part of that theory.
If it had been created during Trost, how did it know what the purple flare had meant, or really the fact that the flare had meant anything in general.
There were just far too many questions that gained less and less answers the more that he thought about them, which is why when the first red flare was spotted he could have almost cried with relief.
Which in hindsight was sort of terrible, but Armin couldn't have cared less in the moment, and it looked as if the rest of his squad was having similar feelings as the oppressive atmosphere around them lifted.
The flare had come from one of the back right elite squads, not quite the furthest back but very close meaning that it had likely moved closed in from the right, far back enough for the spotting squad to miss it but up enough that it simply hadn't spotted the furthest squad.
"Armin, flare." A voice to his right reminded him, snapping him out of his thoughts.
He fumbled for a moment, letting out an, "Ah, yes," as he reached back into his bag to retrieve another green flare, barely getting his fingers around it before he saw a plume of black smoke rise from the same location.
'Another titan?' He wondered as he shot off the green flare, watching as the surrounding squads responded in kind, counting three...five...eight...nine total plumes of smoke.
His eyes immediately locked onto the area where one remaining flare should have been, the furthest back right, the squad that he had assumed the titans had skipped over. He gave them a moment, knowing that occasionally flares could be misplaced or take a minute to fire off, but after the sky continued to remain blank he began to curse.
"Elite Squad Five is not responding!" He shouted to Hanji who looked back at him for a second before pulling their right hand off of their reins and raising it in the air. An order to get ready.
"Any other titan flares?" They asked as they began to ready themselves, lightly tapping the gas canisters at their sides.
"No sir!"
"Good. Keep me updated and stand by."
"Yes sir!" Shouted the squad, each awaiting for their next orders nervously. Although Armin didn't doubt the fighting prowess of the Fourth Elite Squad, the ones who had currently spotted the titan or titans, there was something wrong about the situation.
Why hadn't the Fifth Squad responded, and if they had truly been wiped out why hadn't they fired any flares when they had first spotted the titans? From what he knew Annie should have been in charge of the flares on that squad and she was easily one of the most competent out of all the rookies.
So what had happened for such a catastrophic failure like that to happen?
Armin pushed the thoughts out of his mind, hoisting the side back up onto his lap for quicker access as he continued to scan the area for any other titans, a new plume of black catching his attention.
The Seventh Squad, one of the two middle squads had fired off their flare and Armin was quick to respond, shouting, "Seventh Squad spotted an Abnormal." as he loaded the color canister and shot it into the sky.
Two abnormals in less than five minutes? While certainly not impossible, seeing two back to back was odd, especially considering the low overall turnout of titans over the course of the expedition.
He watched the green responses shoot into the sky, the time courning to eight and not even having to pause to look for which one was missing.
"Fourth Squad is not responding!" he shouted back to Hanji who audibly cursed before pulling back on their reins.
"Veer left!" They shouted as they began to steer their horse inwards, towards the middle of the formation, the rest of the squad being quick to respond as Armin grit his teeth.
So they were thinking the same thing that he was, that there was no fucking way two sperate abnormals had come out of absoluetly nowhere an decimated two extremely skilled squads.
That whatever titan was approaching was not only extremely dangerous but approaching far too quickly for comfort.
Hanji began to urge their horse on faster, a silent order to everyone else to follow as the squad began to speed up, a decision Armin questioned until he saw what was directly ahead.
A forest of giant trees looming eerily over them, reminding him of his childhood in which he'd always been warned of entering due to the threat of wolves, but Armin was not a child any longer. They no longer seemed to hold his fear like they used to, but rather held a promise of safety, an escape.
And so he followed the squad into the forest, looking back one last time to watch the squad directly behind him shoot off a final black flare as the other squads continued to fail to respond.
The sudden silence was almost deafening as the background sound of wind and thudding in the distance was swallowed up by the thick canopy, leaving nothing but the quick hoofbeats of horses and the faint clink of metal as the squad continued to move.
They weaved in between the thick trees for a few more minutes until he saw Hanji hold their right arm out once more, this time bending it at the elbow with their palm facing forward. An order to stop.
Armin tugged a bit on his horses reins, slowing down with the squad until they were moving at a relaxed canter, although the mood was anything but. He watched as Hanji stopped and listened, looking behind them for something, although it was impossible to tell whether they were searching for whatever was chasing them or simply another squad.
When nothing but silence responded they nodded towards Moblit before abruptly drawing their sword and jamming it into the nearest tree at eye level-a display that Armin had to admit he flinched a bit at-before withdrawing a bright red strip of fabric.
"Find a branch and tie up your horses for now." They ordered, releasing the blade from their handle and threading the fabric through the small hole on the end. "Everyone has at least one acoustic round, correct?"
Armin nodded, running his thumb over the slightly smaller cartridge within his side pack. Acoustic rounds were rarely used simply because the color flares were generally more effective but in the case those flares were almost useless.
Once the rest of the group had confirmed Hanji sighed. "Good. Although there seems to be an unknown threat behind us our overall mission hasn't changed, our aim is still to locate and capture the Rogue titan.
They fiddled with the switches on their gear for a moment, checking their clicks before continuing with, "Our goal right now is to cover as much ground as possible so we are going to be splitting up." as Armin let out a shudder.
Splitting up was, well, easily one of the most dangerous things they could be doing in this situation but he had to agree that it was the most efficient way to go. While the Rogue titan would have been easy to spot in open plains due to its size, this forest was both thick and massive. If they continued to travel in a group they had almost no chance of encountering the titan before the day was up, and with a new threat trailing them there was no telling how much time they truly had left.
But Hanji seemed unfazed by the fear the swept among the squad as they continued to explain the plan. "Armin be staying here, staying in the trees and surveying the area in case Rogue happens to pass through here, but the rest of us will be heading off into different directions until we reach the forest edge before heading back. If you see him, fire your round."
They pointed towards the blade in the tree, the red fabric standing out starkly against the natural green of the forest. "This is our meeting point. If you hear the acoustic round you are to head back here to convene, alright?"
Armin nodded, glancing around at the nervous faces surrounding him. At this point it was clear that Hanji would not be addressing the threat behind them anymore, probably due to a total tack of information.
Although given their current situation it wasn't as if there was much they could do regardless. If the reason for the squads behind them to stop responding was truly the same there was no way any of them could individually take it on, meaning that it wasn't even worth worrying about.
That at this point all of their energy should be put into attempting to complete the mission, not thinking about factors that they ultimately couldn't change.
Or at least that was what Armin told himself as he watched his squad pull themselves off into different directions before he shot his anchors up as high as they would go and flew up into the treetops.
It was peaceful up at the top. Looking down through the thick foliage to spot the red fabric which waved every once in a while, when the slightest of breezes made its way through the trees.
It was peaceful, but also fara more nerve wracking than anything Armin had experienced so far.
Without any of his squad members around he had almost no protection from any stay titans, save for the trees, but even then they'd only be a temporary relief. He knew that he was nowhere near as skilled as any of the veterans and was severely lacking in 3DMG skills even when compared to his fellow graduates, meaning that on his own he may as well be a free meal.
But that really wasn't his main worry.
He'd be able to stay out of sight and high up enough that any titans on the ground would either completely avoid him or have an extremely difficult time getting to him, giving him plenty of time to move to a different tree or slightly different area.
After all, there were no shortage of anchors for his gear in this forest, giving him the ability to move at will whereas a titan would have to continually chase him. Regardless of how he looked at it he had the high ground when it came to normal titans, but of course there was still that one unknown factor.
He knew that whatever had taken out the groups behind him had to be a type of titan, or at the very least look exactly like one at a distance, as if it hadn't none of the titan flares would have been fired, the squad would have fired an emergency flare instead.
Meaning that whatever was after them could be another intelligent titan, like the one they were currently hunting, but that was just him grasping at straws at this point.
But it wasn't as if it was impossible. It'd been a possibility that had eluded Hanji and him for a bit, as if the Rogue titan really was a new species of titan it only made sense for there to be more like him. Even if they were much farther out or in whatever hiding place the Rogue had been in earlier it would still be less surprising than if the Rogue was the only one of its species.
Still, the idea of multiple intelligent titans that had somehow escaped both sight and capture for the entire existence of unsettling, especially considering the only other two titans that Hanji had hypothesized as being intelligent were the Armored and the Colossal, both enigmas of their own.
Yet at the end of the day exactly what was going on with any of those titans wasn't his concern, his concern was the faint thudding that was making its way into his ears, a thudding the was far more rhythmic and composed than the hoofbeats he was used to.
The sound was approaching quickly, far quicker than he thought a normal titan would be able to navigate this dense forest, especially considering how many spaces would be outright blocked for something of its size but it was most certainly approaching and approaching fast.
Armin gripped his swords as he slunk back further into the foliage of the trees, clearing out a small area for just his face. If he was lucky it'd be the Rogue titan, having figured out that the scouts were now in its forest and saving them the trouble to finding it themselves, but Armin knew that it almost certainly wasn't.
The sound was coming from a direction which would lead directly out of the forest, meaning that it had likely entered recently, and there was only one thing he could think of which could do that at its current speed.
And so he waited, holding his breath as he listened to the rhythmic thudding, getting closer and closer until-
The titan slowed it's pace, stopping briefly in the small clearing to take a look at the red fabric, giving Armin a second to process its appearance.
It had blonde hair reaching down to just above its shoulders and beginning to cover livid red stripes of muscle that seemed to poke out from beneath its skin. A trait that Armin had never seen nor heard of in a titan.
From where he was sat he couldn't see much of the rest of the titan's body, only able to get a top-down view, but it was enough to realize what it's final striking feature was.
The titan was full proportionate, just like the Rogue titan it looked almost as if someone had simply scaled a human up to size, but this time with far more abnormalities. Whereas the Rouge titan's skin had looked smooth, like a large flat expanse, its looked ridged. Where the Rogue had full coverage it looked as if its skin only covered about half, creating a far more intimidating appearance from afar.
It was somewhat obvious they had to be of the same species, a type of titan built for attacking others with that type of build, but there was something gnawing at Armin, telling him that something was off.
For one, many of the traits Hanji had proposed were used for hunting simply weren't present on this thing, the long tapered ears that were starkly present on the Rogue being nowhere on this titan.
He'd seen its hands briefly as well, all white bone and exposed muscle but no claw tips for gripping and ripping flesh, and even then there was still the problem of just how different they looked.
He'd seen animals with large variations between them, birds with all of their different sizes and shapes being a great example, but that was always because they had different purposes.
The small birds with long beaks were different than the parrots he'd seen in markets because of what they ate, how they hunted, and that was a big problem if the difference between these two were for the same reasons.
Because if this titan wasn't built for hunting other ones, what was it built for?
Armin didn't get to continue this train of thought for much longer though, as the titan below him seemed to freeze in place, its subtle movements as it had been observing the fabric stopping as it slowly began to face forward.
Armin drew in a shaky breath. From what he knew, that was the current direction of the supply carts and Levi squad, although he really had no idea. The plan was still the same for his squad but he knew that those were more flexible, more likely to change under pressure.
Still, they couldn't have moved too far off the mark and he had no clue how fast this thing could move, making it a very dangerous possibility. But there was no way that he could fight it.
If he was right this thing had been able to single-handedly take out two elite squads on, making any hope of him even being able to slow it down being near zero, so it was safer to just stay put. To stay out of sight and relay information later.
After all even if he couldn't fight he could at least make the fight easier for everyone else.
Or at least that was what he believed until he watched the titan turn its face upwards, scanning the area where he was.
Armin's breath caught in his throat, the only thought running through his mind being that this titan had the most brilliant blue eyes as they continued to look around, finally locking onto him.
He was dead, oh he was so dead. His hands shook as the titan continued to stare at him as he yelled at himself to move, to just move!
He had the advantage here, among the trees, all he had to do was fly away and stay high and it'd never be able to catch him. All he had to do was move!
But he couldn't, and he was losing ground with every second he continued to stare into the titan's eyes, becoming nothing more than the brainless titan fodder his training had warned him of becoming.
This titan wasn't brainless though. Not by a long shot.
No normal titan would have been able to take out four elite squads. No normal titan would have stopped to examine the marking point that Hanji had set up.
And no normal titan would have been able to spot him from where he was in the trees, but this one had. So Armin froze. Hoping, praying to whatever could hear him that this titan decided that he wasn't worth the effort because he wasn't sure if he could move if it decided he was.
But it looked as if he was having no such luck today.
When the titan turned its head at first Armin had believed for a moment that it might be moving away but was quickly proven wrong as it jumped up to grab one of the lower hanging thick branches, barely holding on long enough to get its feet on the trunk before launching itself towards the treetops.
Armin let out a choked out scream as it came face to face with him, his arms finally deciding to corporate as he scrambled for his gear and blades, but it was far too late.
The titan had grabbed him and was pulling him down, down out of the treetops and towards the ground, down out of his only safety.
The wind whistled in his ears as he moved, struggling to breathe with the heavy weight of a titan grip on his chest. Even if this titan decided not to eat him at this point all it had to do was drop him and that would be it. There was no way for him to get his anchors into anything substantial at the speed he was moving at, and even if he could it wouldn't save him.
He was moving too fast, too hard and everything was blurring together in a wonderful mosaic of green.
And then it stopped.
His head spun as he tried to regain his balance but he could tell that he had stopped moving, coming to rest directly in front of the titan's face. He blinked a few times to clear his vision, just to confirm that what he was seeing was real, but there was no mistaking it.
Rather than quickly eating him or letting him fall to his death this titan was simply staring at him, eyes darting around his form, and Amrin couldn't do much but stare back.
Then, just for a split second he thought he saw the titan smile and was frozen once more.
His world began to move again, and distantly he recognized that he was getting farther and farther from the titan, almost as if it was holding its arm out, before the tips of his boots touching something solid as the grip around his chest began to loosen.
It was letting him go?
Armin continued to stare forward as the grip got lighter and lighter, until eventually he was roughly set down on one of the lower lying trunks. He wouldn't be safe here for long but the titan hadn't done anything to damage his gear, and at this point it was obvious that if it had wanted to it would have.
If it had wanted him dead it could have just crushed him the second it had its hand around him.
But it hadn't.
It had let him live.
The titan took a few steps back, turning as if it was preparing to leave, at which point Armin realized something he hadn't seen at all before.
On its chest were set two large lumps of flesh, covered in ridged layers of skin and surrounded by muscle but unmistakably in the form of breasts.
'Titans weren't...they'd never shown…' Armin's thoughts continued to spin as he listened to the thudding of the titan leaving the clearing, running towards the middle of the forest.
And they stayed that way until a few minutes later when they were broken by the sharp piercing of an acoustic round.
While he wouldn't admit it to his squad members, personally Levi felt as if this expedition had been going to shit for quite a while now.
The numerous lost squads had been a wake up call but it had really been the lack of any titans that should have queued them into the realization that what they were walking into may as well have had trap written all fucking over it.
Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to be upset over the situation yet, not when they'd effectively caught the biggest source of all their worries up until this point, trapping it-no, her, in what was supposed to be their trump card against the Rogue titan. Something to use just in case things had gotten a tad bit messy.
And messy things were indeed as he watched the titan wirthe within the hundreds of sharp wires sinking deeper into its flesh with every movement she made.
Like an insect caught in a web, every time she moved she simply trapped herself more. Her skin rapidly healing and trapping the wires even deeper while she couldn't do much but futility cover her nape.
He let the anchors of his gear shoot into one of the thick trees before pulling himself up, settling down next to Erwin who was watching the situation with an impassive look on his face.
"That does not appear to be the Rogue titan."
Levi snorted. "No shit, but it's a titan that needed to be captured."
He heard Erwin let out a sigh, and although he knew that Erwin wasn't particularly upset with the situation either, that being this far off the plan was far more stressful than what he would prefer to deal with.
"Hanji should have heard the round from where they were." Levi supplied, absentmindedly cleaning off his blades despite not having been used yet. "Should we just take her out or wait for shitty glasses to get here and decide?"
"At the moment I do not see the harm in waiting."
"Hm." So Erwin was worried about exactly what this titan could do, and truth be told Levi was a bit concerned as well.
He'd been in charge of training all of the elite squads that had been taken out at this point, and while none of them were exceptionally strong they should have been more than enough to take out almost any titan thrown their way.
Which meant that this bitch was an exception, though that was obvious visually.
So he continued to watch her for any clues that may let him know how it had managed to take out so many squads so quickly, but the only thing he got was an increasingly panicked look on the titan's face.
Or he would say it looked panicked. For all he knew it could have been gloating about how it was going to eat them all, a sentiment it may have been trying to express as it began to roar.
He covered his ears which were already beginning to ring from such close proximity to the sound as it continued. He had no idea what she was attempting to do, but judging by her struggling it wasn't working.
Yet the roaring still continued as steam began to pour out of the lacerations she made across her body, forming a thick cloud above her as her movement continued.
And then all at once it stopped.
Levi removed his hands from his ears, still unable to hear much at the moment as he peered down into the thick cloud of steam. What had been the point of that display? Had it been calling for help? For mercy?
It didn't matter.
It looked as if no help had come and nobody here was going to offer it any fucking mercy after what it had done, so it looked as if eveything had just been for show.
Or at least that was what Levi thought until the dull roar of titan footsteps made its way to his ears.
The steam was beginning to clear now as well, revealing nothing but slack wire beneath it.
'How the hell had it gotten away?' was Levi's first thought as he shot himself off towards the direction it was running, knowing in the back of his mind that it was headed in the same direction as his squad, purposefully or not.
Regardless, at this point what he had was an unknown threat that had already shown itself to be capable of taking out Survey Corps members heading towards where Erwin had predicted the mission objective would be, meaning that he had to incapacitate her as fast as possible.
The was far easier said than done though as the bitch was fast. He was already using far more gas than he felt comfortable with in order to make sure that she didn't gain too much of a lead on him, but even then that was looking like that might not be enough.
The terrain was to his advantage, however, and so with every dodge and duck she had to take, he inched closer, his hands twitching around his blades in anticipation.
He estimated that he would be on her within a minute or so, quick enough to slash her achilles tendons and stop her in her tracks before being able to slow down and fully evaluate her as a threat.
Or he would have been able to had it not been for a flash of something large and unmistakably titan catching his eye as he heard someone shout "Captain!"
He immediately stopped his gas, shooting one of his anchors into the tree next to him to pull him into a resting position as he took a moment to observe the scene.
A quick glance revealed all five of his squad members, well and alive, standing in a ready position on the ground all facing towards-
Ah. Guess he was killing two birds with one stone here.
As he turned his gave to what his squad members were staring at he was met with the face of the Rogue titan, and if he didn't know any better he'd say the titan almost looked bewildered. He didn't get to dwell on it for long though as rather than stopping the titan he'd been chasing simply continued straight on their path, tackling the Rogue to the ground.
"Stand down!" He ordered his squad, watching them flinch back from their ready positions, eyes never leaving the two titans who were now battling, but at this point it almost seemed like a losing battle.
The Rogue had obviously been taken off guard, being almost completely pinned down by one of the other titans arms and unable to do much but scratch and snap at the other titan, injuries which were healing in seconds.
On the other hand the titan he'd been chasing simply reared and arm back and slammed it down into the Rogue's face, the impact rumbling the ground as it crushed clean through the Rogue's jaw.
Levi almost flinched at the display but realized that this was his chance. The new titan had her back to him at this point, almost all focus placed on the Rogue titan and would have little way to be warned of or avoid any of his attacks.
He dropped both of his anchors, redirecting them to a tree just past the titan and quickly pulling himself along the path, letting the force of the motion easily carve a neat line through the top of her left tricep before repeating the motion with the left.
At this she took her attention off of the Rogue, who was slowly regenerating but seemed overall very dazed and turned it towards Levi who continued his attack.
He worked from the top down, slicing through the muscles connected to the back of her shoulders before moving down to the hips, knees, and ankles, taking out as much as he could not necessarily to end her, but rather to hinder her movement.
Although he had no doubts in his ability, something about this titan made him uneasy, like there was something he was still missing, so he avoided the nape for now, focusing on making sure that there was no possibility of error once he went in for the killing blow.
He had forgotten to take one factor into account though. A factor which reminded him of its existence in the form of a narrowly dodged fist that hadn't been aiming for him.
Moving quickly, he shot his anchors back into the tree that he'd previously been in, knowing that attempting to fight while the Rogue titan was defending itself was a stupid idea.
The Rogue quickly pulled itself back on top of the other titan, looking to land a similar punch to the one he'd taken, but rather than connecting it simply hit the ground, creating vibrations that Levi could feel from here he was in the tree.
So it didn't surprise him when the bones in his elbow and arm popped right back through the skin, a macabre show of power that was ultimately useless.
The Rogue titan roared, whether out of pain or frustration Levi couldn't tell but the new titan wasn't about to let this small opportunity go. She ripped herself out out from under him, flipping him over and sinking her jaws into the back of the Rogue titan's nape in one smooth movement.
This threw Levi into motion as he went for a similarly deadly move, trying to get his blades in the back of her nape as fast as possible but as he moved he didn't hear or feel the normal rip of flesh.
Instead he felt his blades break as he abruptly realized why she'd been so confident. He shot his anchors out to anywhere they could catch, needing to leave the area as soon as possible as he looked back on what had happened.
Covering her nape was a sheen of blue crystal, a sheen that he'd seen already on her arms and legs but had attributed to being a trick of the light. But it wasn't. It was protection.
And there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.
He watched helplessly as the titan ripped out the Rouge's nape, taking out a chunk that was far bigger than what was needed to kill before scrambling to her feet and beginning to run.
Fuck. While Levi still didn't understand how the bitch had gotten free, that really didn't matter in the long run at this point. What matters is that she was taken down.
Unlike the Rogue titan she obviously had no intention of helping humanity, her goal seeming to be the opposite in fact, so while Hanji may whine and bitch to him about it later having this titan dead was far more useful than taking it back in for study.
"Petra, Gunter, fall back!" He called out to the two remaining members of his squad still following him. "That's an order!"
"Sir!" He heard Petra shout back to him, obviously not very pleased with this decision but that didn't matter. This titan wasn't normal and he wasn't going to risk any of his team getting hurt. She'd already shown off far more fighting prowess than any other titan, having been able to recognize her opportunity to quickly take the Rogue down, but she wasn't fighting back anymore.
Whether taking out the Rogue had been her goal all along or she was simply scared of them now, Levi wasn't going to pass this opportunity up. She was stuck in a dense forest, a terrain that was nothing but a hindrance for her but a boon for him.
He was able to catch up with ease compared to before, swooping down and slicing through her achilles tendons and sending her crashing to the ground as she futilely put a crystal coating back over her nape.
But Levi wasn't worried about that.
From what he'd seen she could only cover certain parts of her body in that crystal and even then only one part at a time, making the next parts of his job far easier. Once more he sliced through all of the important muscles he could think of, leaving her little time to regenerate before moving onto the next part.
After taking out everything he could he noted with displeasure that the crystal coating was still covering her nape, meaning that she could heal independently of this power. Something he'd suspected but hadn't had proof of until now.
The solution was simple though. If he couldn't attack the titan's nape though the back of her neck he'd simply have to go through the front.
Moving quickly he anchored his wires to the titan's forehead, pulling himself up and forcing his used blades as far into the titan's eyes as he could and ripping them to the side. Once they were stuck he released them, reaching his handles back down to the blade holders on his hips for new ones before releasing one of his anchors.
Using his remaining wire as a pivot point he pushed off the side of the titans cheek before using the momentum he'd gained to circle the titan's face, pushing his new blades through the thick muscles on both sides, before dropping his anchor entirely.
Just in time as well it seems, as while her jaws were now rendered useless Levi watched as they shot closed quickly before falling open. A remnant of a movement she hadn't been able to make fast enough.
Now she was done. Out of options and unable to heal fast enough there was no way left for her to defend herself and he could see that she knew it as well.
She squirmed uselessly, steam beginning to shoot out from the muscles on her triceps as they healed faster but it was already too late. Placing anchors on her cheeks Levi shot up towards her mouth, fully intending to use the slices he'd made to carve through what was left of her nape but he stopped short.
There was a saliva covered mass slipping down her tongue and once Levi looked closer he realized that it was something, no, someone who she'd grabbed at some point. That was why she had been running, why she hadn't attempted to bite him as he'd approached.
She'd been attempting to...protect whoever this person was. In her own sick way.
He glanced at the man-no, boy, he'd just uncovered, noting the crushed 3DMG still at his sides and the familiar Training Corps logo on his back before hesitating. Though she hadn't attempted to hurt the boy in any way previously, who was to say that she wouldn't attempt to in her dying throes?
There was something missing here, something that Levi couldn't see and so he made his decision, hefting the kid under one arm as he launched himself back towards the trees. He roughly set the kid down, only making sure that he wouldn't fall to his death before turning back and-
She was gone.
Like before there was a giant cloud of steam in her place and a quick shot from his anchors showed that she wasn't simply hiding, she was gone.
Just like the Armored and Colossal.
He cursed, rubbing his hands along his temples. He should have gone for the final blow. He should have assumed that she'd do the exact same shit she'd done before.
But there wasn't much he could do about it now except for gathering up the limp weight of the kid he'd retrieved.
Unlike the Survey Corps the trainees didn't get different patches depending on their graduation year or expedition meaning that it was impossible at a glance to tell exactly who this kid was, if the jacket and uniform they were wearing was even theirs at all, but he knew that Shadis kept a mental portrait of almost all the cadets he taught so worst comes to worst he'd just have to bring the kid to him.
Still, it was certainly an odd situation to be in, and one he didn't want to be explaining to the rest of his squad at the moment, but as the telltale whirring of wires made its way to his ears he realized he'd have no choice.
"Sir, did you-" Oluo cut himself off as he took note of the cadet at his Captain's feet. "What the hell?"
"'Your guess is as good as mine." Levi explained as the rest of his squad arrived, each staring with mild disgust and curiosity towards the boy at his feet. "He was in the bitch's mouth."
He heard a muffled "What?" from the small crowd that had begun to surround him as the last and newest member of his squad arrived.
"Did you kill her?" He heard Mikasa ask as she made her way to the front of the group, freezing at the sight of the person ahead of her.
"Eren?"