"No, no, no, no, no! You've got to be joking, this cannot be possible."
"Calm down, you'll only make it worse. If you struggle too much you'll reopen the wound!"
"My arm, my bloody arm!"
"As I've told you. It might work again in the future. It will take time but there's a chance."
"A chance my ass. What am I going to do without my right arm?" Leo was shocked to hear the aftermath of the explosion. The piece of metal that hit and cut his arm nearly severed the whole right biceps, damaging nerves and muscle fibre. The doctors tried their best closing up the wound and patching it up however, there's a chance Leo will never be able to use his right hand again. The chances of him healing are... far more unlikely than the chances of him never using his hand again. The best he can hope for is small simple movements such as lifting it up or down or to push something with it.
"We... we could amputate it if you'd like. There's always hope for a recovery but... you'll most likely have your hand hanging to your side for the rest of your life." The doctor says not knowing how to be gentle about it.
"Just leave me." Leo says not wanting to talk about it any longer. "How in the world am I supposed to capture a titan now? It was already a suicide mission with both hands, imagine only one!" Leo shakes his head not knowing what to do. Someone knocks at the door.
"Can I come in?" A feminine voice says from behind the door.
"Sure, come laugh at my misery with your organ replacing powers." Leo says realising it was Pieck.
"I wanted to thank you in person for what you've done. You've saved both my life and..."
"Yeah, yeah. You can thank me when my left hand no longer looks like a fresh piece of beef. I hope for your happiness you don't start steaming when things that aren't supposed to heal start healing."
"What do you mean by that?"
"What if you get a haircut and scold the poor hairdresser?"
"That doesn't happen."
"Well, two out of three out."
"What's the third option?"
"I haven't even thought of the second one. I'm just leaving room in case something comes up."
"Right... still. I'm surprised you saved my life and to thank you I got you this!" She says pulling out a small carton box from behind her back.
"It's a cake."
"What am I going to do with a cake?"
"You'll do well and eat it. Do you have any idea how hard it was for her to get it?" A deep male voice says entering after her. It was Magath followed by Zeke.
"Commander!" Leo says trying to lift his right arm however only the shoulder moves.
"At ease soldier. We've got to talk about the weapon platform. The sniper that was with you is under sedatives and won't get out of surgery for at least two more days. This leaves you as the sole, able survivor of the incident to report on its effectiveness."
"Right... permission to eat and share cake sir?"
"Granted."
"Oh, you'd share cake with devils?" Zeke says mockingly.
"There are thirty five degrees in the shadow. How long do you think that thing will last until it spoils? If I leave it there I'll have to wait for a nurse to come bay and throw it away and they are as rare as a good Eldian. If I eat it all I'll get sick and spend even more time in this medicine stinking place."
"Back to the main point. The weapon platform."
"Frankly sir, it was a complete failure. The sniper in the front is either the only weapon we can use or useless. If we're on the move he cannot aim, and if we're stationary the machine-guns cannot fire. The mortar is complete dead weight. It unbalances the other three pods and if hit it's a sure kill. It exploded and damaged the whole platform on top of damaging the Cart titan to the point Pieck had to transform again meaning she couldn't have kept the platform on her back. The best option is four machine-guns and for the Cart titan to keep moving as much as possible. If we get hit only once by an anti armour shell we're done fore." Then it struck Leo.
"What in the world am I doing? Why am I giving these monsters tips on how to better kill their enemies? Die in a ditch on the side of the road." "Yeah, I don't know what else to say. Find a way to deal with anti titan mines or something."
"Very well. We'll use this to strengthen our forces." Magath stands up and salutes Leo. "Marley is grateful to you for your sacrifice." He says before leaving followed by the two Warriors.
"Don't act like I'm dead yet." "Don't you dare act like that either Leo. They all rest their hopes on you, do not disappoint them." For the rest of the day Leo rested but two days after, once he was released out of hospital he headed for the training yard. Leo was still in recovery and he shouldn't be active for at least a month considering the damage he has take but he didn't care.
"Flesh? I don't care about it, wear it out to the bone. They've offered their hearts for me to be here, I'll wear out my flesh! Annie Leonhart, we both bear the name of the lion, but will you be as willing as me to make sacrifice?" Leo says starting to kick and punch with the left hand a tree stump. If he couldn't use his right arm he would just have to compensate with the other three limbs. During the day he would train so hard he would have different colour bruises on his bruises. His pants and left sleeve were covered in blood and no matter how much the nurses and the doctors would try to stop him he would keep getting up and tearing out his skin and muscles the next day. Once they removed his tree stump he started kicking the side of a building.
"This body can still fight. I might not be able to face a titan in hand to hand combat, neither as a man nor a titan, but I can still use it to infiltrate as an assassin. My only chance now is to discover where the Tybur family lives, infiltrate their mansion and capture each and every single one of their members without being discovered. Captain Levi, you fought with a broken leg and a broken body, Captain Hange you... The titan killing gear, the three dimensional manoeuvrer gear! If someone knows how to recreate it that would be captain Hange!" Leo gets out of bed pondering on how to trigger Hange's memories. He had a glimpse of Grisha's memories when he had to save Pieck's life performing surgery.
"Captain, you wanted to ride the Cart titan and understand their nature." "Yet you died burning to death so be merciful and share with me your wisdom!" Leo shouts scolding himself with boiling water from head to toe. Two soldiers found him under boiling water inside the communal showers kneeling in pain. They run towards him and pull him out from under the water while the other soldier stopped it from running.
"Medic! Medic!" The soldiers shouted but Leo wasn't bothered by them. He saw it, the design, the gears moving, it was as if Hange was there teaching him how to recreate the design.
"Captain... the world is a worse place without you." He said crying with both eyes this time. It might have been the prolonged espouser to the boiling water but this time the memory seemed more real, more vivid, nearly interactive. It was as if for the first time he wasn't entering other people's memories, but they were entering his.
The incident was followed by days of hospitalisation under a constant dose of painkillers and sedatives. His actions were so out of hand news got even to the generals. Luckily for Leo he wasn't considered insane, or at least the majority of the people in charge with his future didn't considered him that. They instead assumed he was simply frustrated for being unable to participate in battles and aid Marley in securing it's place on the world stage. It might have been a bad choice to insult the Warriors back on the ship when they were heading back home from Goryeo but now it paid off. The generals simply assumed he was feeling ridiculed by the fact Eldians were doing more for their country than he was. Once he burns retracted and he was able to stand up again he was visited by Magath again.
"I cannot offer you a job on the field again. You are simply unable to fight on the front line. At the same time... I cannot allow you to be discharged from the army. A young man like you without a hand... I'd see you begging on the side of the street in no time. That's why I'm here to offer you a new job in logistics and development. The informations you've offered us about the Cart titan's weapon platform, they produced results. The higher ups are impressed enough with your work and I've managed to convince them in hiring you as a scouting and strategy specialist. You'll be in charge of an R&D department for titan and counter to anti titan weaponry. You'll still be Marley's blade against it's enemy, only this time it won't be you how has to hold it but the Warriors."
"Always ready to serve sir!"
"Then stand up straight Zuege, Marley still calls!"
"You imbeciles, you couldn't have made my job any easier, creating counters to anti titan weaponry. It is like handing me a sword and telling me the exact sharpness needed to cut off your head." Learning about this new opportunity Leo finally calmed down. Once he was out of the hospital he started work immediately.
"So we are going to work together again!" Pieck says being surprised to see Leo working, not on the front lines but the second closest thing to them.
"This time I hope I don't end up with another useless limb. Otherwise who knows, I might have to extract those Eldian juices out of you and create some kind of cure that would work for Marleyans."
"Do you think such thing would be possible?" Pieck says thinking about the Warriors or titans in general being able to share their healing factor with non Eldians.
"For the good of humanity... as a concept, I hope I never find that answer." What Leo was charged to do, was to create a weapon capable of being used by the Cart titan against long range artillery. The mid-eastern rebellion fortified a position around an enormous cannon capable of out-ranging every single weapon Marley has at it's disposal.
"The situation is dire to say the least. The enemy managed to entrench themselves at the top of a hill on top of which they built a cannon three times whatever we can field. Every time we tried to fortify a position and build a cannon of our own we got blown to bits, every time we tried building a cannon bigger then theirs... Well, I don't want to start a dick measuring contest with rebels, besides it would be a huge waste of resources on our part." While Marley is used to lightning fast titan based assaults, the mid-eastern alliance has a long history of fortifying their position with giant cannons, way too oversized to be practical, but that's the strategy they've used to fight titans for over three hundred years and they aren't going to stop any time soon.
"We cannot flank them either as their position is a bottleneck right between two mountain chains meaning our only option is... a frontal assault."
"How long does it take between each attack to be fired?"
"From the cannon? A little over one minute."
"What's the blast radius?" Leo had a plan. The first thing he had to know was how fast could Pieck in her titan form run under one minute. If she was able to outrun the gun as it was reloading then there might be a way for them to take it out. Thus, they loaded Pieck with the weight of a cannon on her back and sent her running while targeting her with pain filled shells. Through their experiments she was nimble enough to move around the radius of impact and react to the enemy switching target location in time to avoid the blast. The second factor in the plan's success was for Marley to create a cannon capable of firing while on Pieck's back. It had to be a self reloading weapon capable of firing at long distances. Pieck would run around between shells while a single operator would spin around the cannon and fire at the enemy's position.
"Commander. You know I have to be the one going on this mission!" Leo says nearly imposing them to be the one to go.
"Would you be able to man the cannon with one hand?"
"I don't have to reload it and aiming is done with the feet. If I press on one pedal it goes to the left or to the right. The second hand is for using binoculars but you know I don't miss my target."
"Zuege..."
"Commander, it has to be me. Someone else might get it wrong."
"Come back in one piece, that's an order solider and bring our Warrior back with you! Understood?"
"I won't let you down!"
"Then go before I get demoted for sending a crippled on the front line." Leo mounts on the cannon and Pieck starts running towards the enemy's position.
"We've got six rounds in this thing. We have three options to hit. They have to keep the ammunition near the cannon otherwise they wouldn't be able to fire this fast. The second target is the leaver the pulls the cannon up and down. If we destroy that piston it will stop moving. Third, if everything else fails, if we time our own shell wit the cannon firing we could make it explode from the inside. No matter what happens you don't stop running even if you don't have legs any more!"
"Understood." The first shells start falling. First the light out of the muzzle of the cannon followed by a wall of sound. The shell flies through the air making a terrifying whistling noise as it heads towards the ground.
"I'm doing it captain Erwin! I'm following in your footsteps! Rage! Scream! Fight!" "Wear out your flesh! Offer your hearts!" Leo shouts as he and Pieck are running towards the enemy artillery.