"Mountains?" Levi asks the blond teenager, wishing his trusty skepticism could play a part in anything his mind didn't want to categorically accept. But in the wake of this morning, that list is fucking long, starting as it did with a Catwoman.
Mixed feelings stir within him. Just half an hour ago, he was three and three-quarters deep in his sorrows, looking to go out on a mission, be a leader as hypocritical as that made him out to be. Kill some abnormals swiftly as a means of working out his frustrations. Then come back to base; back to emptiness before heading out to the Capital early the next morning. Maybe going to a whorehouse after he washes the road dust off his skin. Maybe he wouldn't even do anything with the girl he pays for. Maybe he would. If only to get his mind off Erwin for a spell. Using sex as his avenue through a dark time.
A whorehouse is not his scene. Not even his style, but he needs a change in routine, damnit. If only for a moment's distraction. Something outside of drinking to dull the pain when his hands were no longer busy with training or killing or paperwork. When the quiet got too loud, and he was alone with himself again. Before, he didn't mind it. Used to love being alone, craved it. Especially when he got famous, people wouldn't leave him alone; namely the women. They're the real vultures. Clingy, they looked at him less like a man and more like a meal ticket. A soldier's purse to take care of their wailing brats or their vanity for the latest. Or for food. Or for fame.
The shallowest reasons of them all.
Now, half an hour later, his reality is nursing the motherfucker of all kick to the balls. And Levi was still reeling from it. Damn! He was barely paying attention to what Armin was saying. Important things. Noteworthy things, he was sure. Thankfully, Hanji had made the kid start over from the moment his unexpected trip began, and some of it was covered in the shower Q and A. He'd been paying attention intently then.
Good for me. The mental retort feels laced with an undercurrent of self-disgust. Levi found his feet pacing back and forth in thought outside the impossibility that is the shower stall.
"What the hell are mountains?" The impatience in Hanji's voice mirrors his inner world: muddled with overwhelming confusion that has been gnawing at him like a dog relentless with a dry bone. And just like a dog mistaking the blood in his mouth for marrow in the white bone, Levi kept chewing the things that happened this morning over in his head, and it keeps throwing him for a loop.
Take the cell, for example. For a small space like this to hold a not only shower stall, and, a toilet, plus a cot and a table, it should have been clustered. Yet it was anything, but. It's been bothering Levi like a loose tooth ever since he descended the stairs and witnessed the spectacle in Armin's cell.
How? How is any of this possible?
Never mind the magic trick of how these additionals came to be in his base in the first place. He'll leave that mental discussion for a sober Levi to contemplate if he didn't get to the kitten first.
Around the minute Shakira disappeared into the wall, Levi figured it was in his best interest if he kept an open mind, less it cracks from strain. Between the improbabilities of this morning, Erwin's death, the higher-ups breathing down his and Hanji's necks, and abnormals sighted in unexpected places, Levi felt like he was drowning. Not that he wasn't going to kick as all hells until his head breaks the surface, but the pressure is no joke.
One thing at a time. Soothes his mind's voice in a still whisper which had the effect of releasing a sigh Levi didn't realize he had pent-up in his lungs. The smell of his overripe carelessness hitched a ride into his nostrils by way of his sigh, making him wrinkle his nose in disgust.
Ugh! What the fuck, Levi? His thoughts reproving himself, but not daring to release another sigh in frustration or otherwise. When he tried to swallow, his dry tongue met with friction on the roof of his mouth in the execution of the usually unconscious act.
Cotton-mouthed. Fuck.
"Mountains are like hills," Armin's report was happening at this moment so, he tried to focus all he could on it. That should have been without saying, but hey, I'm human enough to make a mistake. His inward conversation cutting him some slack even if he didn't do that for himself.
"But they're innumerable times larger landmasses than their smaller hill cousins," Armin finished answering the question. In his liquor-soggy mind, the time-lapse between when the question was asked, and the answer was forthcoming, seems stretched. The lights above hurt his eyes like a son of bitch.
"Explain how the fuck you can know that, Armin?" Levi asked reasonably, though it sounded sneered through gritted teeth. "We don't have things called 'mountains' on Paradise Island, so how could you identify what you saw when you've never seen something like it before?"
Damn, he was in a bad mood right now, and that was making him curt. Armin didn't seem to take it personally, though. Good for him since he was all out of strikes when the last of Levi's emotional governance dried up in his last comments. While what was pointed out was true, it wasn't Armin's place to say. Truthfully, Levi was expecting Hanji to rip him a new one for such a colossal fuck up like this morning as would be her right as his commander.
"My grandpapa, I mean my grandfather." the boy hurriedly corrected himself, hoping that they didn't hear that. Levi didn't care. "He had books. Books he wasn't supposed to have if wind of it got to the wrong sort." Armin regaled as though his 'grandpapa' were still living and could get into trouble from what he was revealing now.
Levi allowed him to talk while he opens the oxymoron that is the 'glass door'. He had one question concerning this one thing.
Why?
No other questions. Just why? What possible motivation would cause someone to want to build something so foolish. Doors are for privacy. Doors are built with wood or iron, both sturdy materials for shutting things out or locking things up. So why make one out of something as delicate as glass where everything is on display?
In the Capital, glass is one of the most expensive things because it was so rare. Only the extremely rich, well-off families and successful merchants could afford glass windows or drink from cut crystal glasses. Barkeeps with glass liquor bottles charge a hand and a half to customers to have the privilege of taking a swig from glass bottlenecks versus those bars that can only store their liquor in wood-sealed kegs or barrels and serve their libations in clay cups or wooden mugs rivetted with circular metal at key points to keep the liquor from leaking out.
The thought gave him pause about his own wastefulness, having shattered three bottles with his grip this morning.
Two pay stipends down the drain. Excellent Levi. Just excellent.
Looking at this construct that towered over him, however, it's clear that it would take a substantial amount of glass to make a door of this size and thickness, and height. And it wouldn't be the cheap-expensive-you tap it once, and it cracks ripoff-ones - either. Levi held the door open to test out a theory, noting how his fingers had to expand to full palm to wrap the edge of it in his grasp. A light blue strip seems to run from base to top and over the seam of the rectangle where he held it. Forming a fist, Levi pulls his hand back before surging forward, striking the glass door in the center with about a quarter of his freakish strength. A loud thudding clunk reverberated through the cell, stopping Armin's report and instantly turning two sets of eyes in his direction. Questioning expressions on their faces, Levi had no doubt. He wouldn't know because his eyes were glued to the spot where he hit the door. His facial muscles contorting in puzzled surprise.
"Anyone else gets the impression that Kitten's filthy rich?" Levi offered when no one elected to fill the silence he created with his experiment.
Not even a fissure of a crack registered on the door when other 'quality' glass that's met a lower percentage of his strength shattered instantly. The shards laying on the wood floor of his room just above them, proof of this.
"I got that impression," Armin spoke up, his cheek tinged a bit with red before he continued. "The moment the lights came on, and she was standing before me naked, I couldn't help but notice a navel piercing."
"A navel piercing!" Hanji sounded indulgent, "Shakira is a little rebel, is she?" The chuckle in her voice underlined what she's thinking before she spoke next. "And what do you mean,' you couldn't help but notice'?" She might as well have used her fingers to make air quotes for all the suggestive innuendo in her voice.
Levi made a grunt in the back of his throat while thinking, couldn't help but notice that huh? On your way down to a better view, no doubt. But he kept his mouth shut this time, sparing the kid's dignity the ribbing. However, the strangest thing is that he feels as if he's sobering up by the minute. His natural scowl ridge in place as though the liquor in his bloodstream was slowly losing its touch, and the world was becoming as bleak as he saw it daily, the film melting from his eyes. His behavior becoming more 'Levi Expected'. His mind growing clearer, and focus was almost back in his grasp. And all of this started happening he, couldn't help but notice when he opened the door.
"That's got to be the sexiest thing on a woman, I can imagine. Eh Levi?" Hanji inquired, oblivious to his discoveries.
"Sounds provocative," he remarks without interest.
In the background, he was half listening to Armin explaining why he mentions the sexy navel ring. Something about a gem in it that had Hanji whistling low, especially when the boy remarked that the tiny thing looked like it could buy a few estates back at Wall Maria, his lost home and Erwin's resting place.
"So she's beautiful. She's rich, and she has creepy abilities," Hanji ticked off. "What else do know about our usurper?"
"That she had a hangover this morning," Levi supplied.
"In that regard, you might have found a friend, Levi," Hanji said in jest, but when Levi looked over at her sharply, her eye wasn't laughing.
"Yeah, maybe." Levi volleyed back deadpanned. A sort of -I know! I know, I fucked up- underlined apology. It's his and Hanji's way of communicating with one another sometimes.
"But why did you mention that?" Hanji asks, arms folding over her chest.
"When I opened this door, almost immediately, my hangover started clearing, my focus sharper." He took a deep breath, inhaling as far as his lung would expand, but they're no distinctive scents he could discern from the inside the shower.
Then why am I suddenly feeling balanced? What's in here that's working to wake up my drunk brain cells? Levi's thoughts were racing, converting into words as fast as his brain could process them over his tongue. "Several different things don't add up here," Levi said in a rapid patter.
"I'll say," Hanji commented.
"Shut up for a moment and listen," Levi hushed her, his eyes scanning the shower stall for the first time.
The first time! This is the first time I'm looking inside this thing. That realization hit him like a bullet.
"I'm with the kid on this one, Hanji. She ain't from Marley."
Hanji opens her mouth to protest, but again, Levi shuts her down. "How long have we been in here, Hanji? Six to eight minutes? Just about?" He didn't wait for her response. "Yet this is the first time any of us have opened this door. Have you noticed?"
Brows furrowed before he continued in his stride, "You're one of the smartest, most curious people on this god-forsaken island, Hanji. Explain yourself. Why haven't you been all over this cell already? Investigating, touching, doing the weirdest shit only you do when the rest of us think you're nuts."
"Are you insulting me or complimenting me?" Hanji asked scourged-faced and head-tilting as if there was a big question mark over her head indicating her confusion.
"Neither." Levi thundered, an offense to his recovering, delicate head, his breath offensive to his nostrils. Both of these he ignored. "I'm asking you why the fuck you're not doing any of that, Zoe Hanji?"
A bout of silence entered the fray for a few heartbeats before Hanji spoke again. "We can't rule out that she's from Marley," her argument was weak, and they all knew it. Hanji's being stubborn too, Levi realized. He knew well enough about his friend to know when she won't budge on something. This was one of those moments.
"Fine." He told her, resigning from that point, "keep to that if you must, but just like Armin told me a few minutes ago, I need you to get your head out of your ass and be my commander."
"What!?" The teenage officer squeaked, "I didn't say that."
"That's exactly what you said," both Hanji and he blurts out at the same time.
"In military speak, that's what it sounded like." Hanji clarified for the bewildered blond.
"Oh," the boy said softly, not about to argue with his seniors. "while we're on the topic, in the category of questions not answered," Armin started slowly, his chin in the crook of his left index finger with the thumb underneath pinching slightly. It was a gesture Levi often identified with the boy's strategic intellect turning things over in his head. "Do we have an explanation as to why that kettle is still steaming, ignoring the cold, hard fact that it's the middle of Autumn?" Armin started listing things on his fingers, socked feet drafted into a pace just as Levi and Hanji had done as his mind worked out the questions that came out flying out of his mouth like bats from a cave.
"Secondly, the entire squad was in here. Yes, we were talking," Armin fired off that question like he was having a stimulating debate by himself. Hanji exchanged raised eyebrows with Levi as they continued to watch the teenager spit out points their minds seem to be too lazy to consider. "But that's where it's so crazy,"
"What do you mean, Armin?" Levi managed, his mind playing catchup in this conversation.
"We're kids." Armin blurted out as if it's obvious. When blank expressions butted up against his statement, he qualified. "We touch things."
"Okay..." Hanji said slowly, "but you're also soldiers. You have more mental maturity than most adults living in the walls." She counters reasonable, but Armin wasn't bitting.
"Humans are naturally curious about new things they don't understand. A bunch of teenagers in a room they couldn't get into moments before, soldiers at that," he underlined, and Levi could see what he was getting. "And they didn't touch anything left behind? Constructs appeared overnight without so much as waking my guards, and members of the Survey Corps left them alone?" the young said incredulously, and the captain had to agree with his junior officer. That didn't make any sense.
"By the walls!" Armin exclaimed, and Levi thought he was getting just a bit too excited, but he couldn't blame him either, regardless of his protesting head. "Our resident 'Queen Of Glutton' didn't even touch the table with the food after finally getting access to the food? What's that all about?"
"Now, wait a second," Hanji interrupted just when it was getting better, "Sasha was almost hopping to get to that food."
"That was after I barked out the order to get rid of it," Levi stated.
"Oh, that's right." Hanji conceded, considering something else, her brows knitting together.
"It's almost as if Shakira doesn't want us to notice or touch anything she brazenly left behind in our base. It must be using some kind of magic," Armin continues in chin-stroking mode.
"What?" Hanji's disbelieving tone showered the cell. "You did not just say magic-"
"I did," Armin interrupted her sharply, earning him new respect in Levi's book. It might get him a boot in the teeth for his troubles. But he went up a notch, nonetheless. If for nothing more than showing some backbone for his point.
Hey, he's a titan. He can regenerate a couple of teeth within an hour. Grotesque as it is, for a human.
"I'm sorry, Commander Hanji, but you weren't there when I felt and saw the nothingness; a blank space as if colors, and life, and hope, had been wrung out the world like a wet rag. You didn't watch your hands and clothes glow white."
"Your clothes glowed white?!" Both Hanji and Levi said together, the second time in so many minutes.
"Do you understand the definition of a full report, Armin?" Levi demanded.
"Yes, sir. I do." Armin replied instantly.
"The Kitten's clothes were glowing, too," Levi stated to the room while pondering how long he's been holding onto this door. "At what point did your clothes start to glow, Armin?" The urgency in his tone caused the boy to squeak out an answer to his question fast.
"When we were leaving the meadow."
"Give us a play-by-play, Armin," Hanji ordered, her hand performing a rolling gesture to the boy, fingers snapping rapidly.
"We were being chased," Armin retold the cell succinctly, his blue eyes shifting recalling yesterday's events.
"That's after you picked up the kitten?" Levi interjected.
"Right," Armin nodded jerkily. "Our pursuer, Killua Zoldyke, as Shakira identified him, was gaining on us and nearly caught up to us."
"And this is while you're on your horse?" Hanji asks.
"Yes, commander," Armin said quickly.
"And he was on foot?" Hanji pressed, sounding like she didn't want to believe that even though this would be the third time, technically, she hears this part of Armin's report.
"Yes, commander," Armin repeated. "About that time, Shakira started whispering something inside my jacket where I'd put her. Then I started glowing with white light, there was a low hum and then..."
"You found yourself back on Paradise Island," Levi finished for him.
"Well, seconds before that, there was the nothingness again, then I was at the river. But yes, sir, that's what happened." Armin clarified unnecessarily.
"So Kitten used a threshold to get out of the cell." Levi surmised. "The glowing. The whispering. All of it matches up to what Armin just said. That's exactly what she did minutes ago."
Hanji agreed with Levi's assessment, her head nodding, "Didn't hear the whispering, but that's true. She was glowing."
"Still don't want to accept these things, do you?" Levi said, watching Hanji process things she's unused to dealing with daily.
"It's a bit of a learning curve when accepting impossibilities into your daily reality, Levi."
"No shit." Levi scoffed sarcastically.
"From my assessment of Shakira's characteristics," Hanji said off-handedly, "she enjoys being in control. The fact that her things are in front of us, but we fear to touch them-" she trailed off.
"Not fear." Armin ventured, "it's as if we're forgetting that they're here. That they exist."
"Yet you seem to be the only one asking the big questions." Levi finished the chain of thought. "What did she tell us before she left," he asks the cell. Puzzled expressions felt on eyebrows.
"To put Armin in the middle," Hanji snapped her fingers as the answer came out of her mouth before asking, "why? Do you think that it's significant in some way..." she trailed off again.
"Maybe," Levi responded shortly, his mind replaying the flare of anger that sparked at the little bitch telling them what to do through his nerves in a hot flash one second before he regained his composure. Though it still burned him to seething under his skin, no matter what his face said. "Come here, Armin," Levi orders softly.
The young officer did as he was told without hesitation. Levi noted how numb his fingers were from holding the door aloof for so long as he was.
"Yes, Captain Levi?" Armin said, coming to stand in front of him at the doorway of the shower stall.
Levi pushed the door out from the ajar position he's held it at for who knows how long.
"I have an idea," He told the blue-eyed young man holding his steely gaze. Levi could see the trust in those blue pools, patiently waiting on him to get on with whatever he was about to suggest. Hesitating not a blink on what he was about to ask him to do. Unknown and unexplored by them as it was. "Let's get in showers, stay behind me, Armin. Hanji, take up the rear." Levi said before matching into the stall, unsure of what will greet him.
He doubts Shakira will want to hurt her lighter love. She wasn't clear on her feelings for the rest of his squad, and him walking before Armin wasn't a sign of his bravery, it's just what a leader does. The thought was sobering.
If only his brain was prepared on his step for what his eyes were relating to it as true the moment he enters into the shower stall.
"What the fuck?!" Levi heard himself whisper in astonishment, encountering his third impossibility of the morning.