{1.} Any hints of crossover ships that you find – such as Eren X Ruby or Armin X Weiss – are all intended to be there, though if it gets anywhere, it'll be limited to fluff, if any ship even gets that far. You may have to squint to see anything of a ship, because I don't think I'm all that good at writing love/romance in fics. I have experience writing that stuff, yes, but only on Wattpad, and for the most part, through yandere!character X reader fics and I've just... stopped writing those? I'm almost tempted to either delete those fics (because they're somewhat terribly written and embarrassing), or even delete all of my Wattpad stories and maybe even the entire profile, but I'm an indecisive fuck, to say the least, so I don't know if I ever will.
{2.} If you find anything in this story like a typo or a mistake that I forgot to correct then I want you to know that I read the chapters after I publish them, since I'm a bit of a perfectionist. That being said, if you have anything to say about this fic, then feel free to leave a review!
{3.} There will be parts of the chapters that show what is happening back in Remnant. You saw one of those parts last chapter. Speaking of that last chapter – I don't really know how to write dialogue for Y'shtola. I'm not only a bit unfamiliar with her character, but also with the way she speaks.
{4.} If you want a more accurate description or labelling of the Omni-Directional Mobility Gear, there are quite a few diagrams I've been looking at online, which you can also look up yourself if you'd like. I want to be as accurate as possible when it comes to the gear, for the sake of the fic and its story/plot, as well as for me, since there are a few pretty interesting bits of info about it that I've seen, and not using what I've been learning to add more to the fic would be a travesty. No, seriously, I'm someone that likes to flex her knowledge on shit she's researched, and I plan on proving it.
{5.} Crescent Rose actually has a second form when in full scythe mode. This was used last chapter and will keep being used. It's when the scythe's spine actually curves back so it joins with the shaft. One reviewer told me it was called a 'glaive', so I did some research and found out that Crescent Rose's second form is a war-scythe, at least according to the the RWBY Wiki page about Crescent Rose. Also me, because I've done comparisons.
{6.} I want to explain some of the characters from the mainly Bleach/RWBY crossover fic coming into this one: I plan on including them, but I don't plan on making them have too much of an impact on the story, since this is an Attack on Titan/RWBY crossover. I plan to keep it that way – mostly.
She'd lost track of how many years had passed since becoming a Titan. The days had blended together back when she'd been mindless, and despite her attempts to learn just how much time she'd spent as a Pure Titan, she'd ended up learning jack-shit about how many years had passed, or what year it currently happened to be.
But at least one good thing had come from this: after spending all that time stuck as a Pure Titan, she'd gained enough intelligence to talk – quite well, in fact – and control her Titan body. She'd never been able to figure out if her being capable of such feats happened to be due to being injected with the Female Titan's serum, or if she'd just gotten lucky after staying stubborn long enough for her instincts as a Pure Titan to fade away.
Even so, she missed being human. If she still dared to hope for one thing, just one thing, her wish would be to one day be free of her Titan body... somehow – though preferably (and hopefully) without eating anyone. Making a guessing game out of human lives, simply to catch some sort of lucky break and give herself back her own freedom and a second chance at life, didn't happen to be something she could stomach. Plus, the world seemed already cruel enough. She didn't feel like adding to it.
The humans in the green capes had exited through the south-side gate again earlier that morning. Apparently, they went out to regain any areas of Wall Maria, which had been lost to the Titans. Simply for being one, she would be their enemy. She didn't want to be their enemy. She hated this situation as much as they did, and she wanted to end this Titan problem and be free, too. But most of all, she wanted to help.
However, she knew she was limited with what she could do as a Titan – she'd regained her intelligence, her self-control, and had spent years teaching herself to fight, improving her physical abilities and strength, and practicing hand-to hand combat. And aside from the accelerated healing of her Titan form, those were all she had.
And those humans wearing the green capes weren't here. Weren't here to stop that Colossal Titan, weren't here to stop the other Titans invading, and weren't here to put a stop to her life and her chance at helping.
My strength can make up for their absence. I do not need them, and thinking about what they would do to me does no good at this time.
A smaller, four-metre Titan charged toward her, its arms outstretched, like a boy running to hug his mother. She pulled her leg back and slammed her kneecap into its face, throwing her leg up in a straight kick. Its head tore from its neck, flying toward the hole in the wall. Then, folding her leg, and angling her foot, she slammed the bare sole of her foot down on the back of its neck, slamming the rest of its body into the ground.
She hadn't originally known how to kill the other Titans when she'd first transformed into one of them. Which made sense, if she thought about it, since the other Pure Titans never really attempted protecting their necks, as far as she'd noticed. So, when she once saw a human in a green cape slash the back of a Titan's neck, she'd been surprised and even impressed, and the more she'd watched them and the way they killed Titans, the more she began to learn that their weak-spot seemed to be in the back of the neck, somewhere between the one metre from the back of the head to the nape of the neck.
Another, taller, potbellied Titan, a bit over ten metres, strolled away from the gate. It appeared to be heading toward her, and by extension, the empty street she was standing in the middle of.
She raced towards it, absolutely unprovoked but wanting to stop its advance dead in its tracks. She hated the idea of having to do this to those that'd been forced into this situation just like herself, but when it came to the idea of the humans on this island being hunted down and slaughtered like animals, with the Titans merely being the instruments of their deaths rather than the root cause, she'd rather fight back and kill the Titans so the islanders wouldn't be killed.
Maybe it would send yet another message back to those who thought they'd get away with their crimes – turning her and the others of her kind into Titans for a start, let alone sending all of them to this island to act as killing machines. To Hell with those so-called 'powers that be'! Shit, she'd raise Hell itself if it'd give those bastards a taste of their own medicine!
Rage guided her left fist as she swung, knuckles slamming hard into the jaw of the potbellied Titan. It toppled backwards, crashing on its back. Still, she stomped her left foot down, and widely swung her right leg, slamming a kick into the side of the Titan, knocking it over to one side, rolling onto its front. Then, swiftly, she rammed her right foot down on the Titan's weak-spot. Flesh and bone crunched under her large, bare foot as she crushed its weak-spot and its windpipe, blood splashing onto her leg and steam bursting out in thin streams between her toes and around the sides of her foot.
A small Titan, no more than five metres, wrapped its arms around her waist, attaching itself to her right hip.
She grabbed it by its short, unruly brown hair, carelessly scraping its scalp, before she swivelled and tossed it back towards the street she'd just came from. Then she followed it, watching it crash into the wall of the building sat central at the end of the street, the road splitting in two different directions. Dust and small bits of debris blew forth from the point of impact, though when the little Titan collapsed and hit the ground, only a shallow crater filled with spiderweb fractures decorated the wall.
She performed a small jump. Both feet landed on the Titan's neck, wholly crushing the rather short length of it. Again, blood spurted out of either side of her feet, as did steam.
"Yang, we're not supposed to be in this part of the formation!"
She perked up at the sweet, light, somewhat high-pitched voice speaking in hushed tones. The voice sounded as if it'd originated from one of the nearby rooftops, and had to belong to a young girl.
"Don't worry, we'll go back in a minute! I just want to see this girl Titan that seems like it's helping us." This voice sounded a bit deeper and a little more mature, yet still feminine enough to say that another girl was talking. This second girl also sounded like she might be older than the first one that'd spoken. "Besides, it seems like everyone's been advised to stay away from her, so they don't get in her way. So we'll go see her and get back to the Middle Guard before anyone—oh! There she is!"
Her large, ocean-blue doe-eyes flicked to her right. On the rooftop of the building beside the one in front of her, four girls landed.
One of the taller girls wasn't dressed in the same uniform the other three wore. The other taller girl, a briefly-deadpan brunette with a light tan complexion and whose cheeks were decorated with freckles, she recognised. She'd helped this brunette get inside the walls during the attack on Wall Maria, upon finding her not too far away from Wall Maria, in her human form, her freedom regained along with a second chance at life. She'd never known what the brunette was called, though.
And so, she asked: "Who are you?" Her own voice sounded pretty deep, but gentle and clear. She ignored three of the four's surprise at her ability to speak. "What do people call you?" She spared a glance at the brunette in question, the only one who didn't look surprised.
"Ah—she's asking for our names," the taller blonde woman, the one not dressed in the uniform, told the other girls. "She wants to know who her allies are, since she's friendly and she seems to be on our side." This blonde woman's voice also matched the one she'd heard talking to the other girls about wanting to see her.
The brunette nodded. "I'm Ymir. That's my only name."
Names... so, her name is Ymir. Perhaps she was named after Ymir Fritz? Ymir's not a very common name, or at least it wasn't before I became a Titan.
"I'm Christa Lenz." The smaller blonde, her appearance seeming incredibly familiar, offered a shy wave of her hand. Not only did Christa's voice match the 'young girl' she'd first heard talking and worrying about the group leaving their post at some kind of Middle Guard, but she also knew she'd never met Christa before, despite how familiar the girl looked.
However, she figured Christa only looked familiar because she bore an almost uncanny resemblance to herself, back when she'd been human. Or, at least what she'd always presumed she looked like as a human, given she'd occasionally spent days looking at her reflection in the ocean, and after Wall Maria fell, in the rivers running along the land in the interior of Wall Maria. The appearance of a Pure Titan generally resembled the appearance of the human that'd been turned into that Pure Titan, after all.
"Yang Xiao Long. I'm not from the military here. I was one of the four girls fighting the Colossal Titan earlier." The taller blonde waved, much more eager and excited in her movements. "And this here is Spring Petallisa." Yang held an open hand out in front of the smaller brunette, whose uniform and gear looked a bit different, as if they'd been... modified?
But... why? Why would she modify her gear or uniform? She'd seen the normal gear already prove somewhat useful for the soldiers.
"What about you, lady?" Yang stepped forward, almost in front of the rest of the group. Yang's strange lilac eyes met her own large ocean-blue ones.
"Lady...?" She blinked, tilting her head. Was Yang... asking her for her name?
She... didn't have a name. She couldn't remember it. After being in this Titan body for so long, a good number of her memories had faded over time, along with many things that should've been important to her – important for her to remember, at least. She didn't even know if she'd understand her own written language anymore. A lot would've changed since she'd transformed, too. Did she even have a name back when she'd been human? And what could've happened to her family? Did she even have a family at one point?
Who... who was she?
"I do not have a name. I cannot remember what it used to be," she solemnly admitted instead. Looking directly at the girls, she added: "I have spent a lot of time like this, and so most of my memories have faded. I barely remember the year I first became a Titan."
Christa blinked, almost sadly, at her words. But then she offered a soft, sweet smile and approached the edge of the rooftop, much to the surprise of the other girls. She clasped her hands together, holding them up to her chest. "That's alright. We'll just give you a new name! At least, until you can remember the one you originally had."
"I do not know if that would be possible. But... a new name..." She considered Christa for a moment. A new name would give her something to call herself. She would have a way for people to address her – a way to be known. "I... would like a new name."
"Sounds good to me." Yang folded her arms, a bright smile plastered on her face. "How about..." Yang tilted her head at Christa, before turning to meet her own large blue eyes again. "...Lady Titania?"
Christa looked up at Yang. "I was thinking more along the lines of Oceania. It'd match her eyes."
"Both of those sound a bit too... fanciful, I think is the word." Spring, the smaller brunette that'd stayed quiet until now, flicked her blue eyes to the sky and pressed a forefinger to her chin. "How about... oh! How about Athena?" She pointed that forefinger at the sky, glancing between all the other human girls.
"Oh..." Yang and Christa both said, their gazes trailing upward as well. Then, both of them smiled, and they spun to face Spring. "That's a good name!"
Athena... it sounds like... an impressive name. A bit grand, but I like it. "I like the name Athena," she said. And for the first time in what felt like a long time, she gave a soft smile. "I accept that name. From now on, I am Athena."
"Well, then, Athena—" Ymir offered her a smile, only for her eyes to flick to her right and then widen. "Hey! Look out!"
Athena looked to her left.
Another pot-bellied Titan collided with her, barrelling into Athena from her left. As it wrapped its thin, near-emaciated arms around her upper arms, its fingers reached under her hair, trying to reach and claw at her nape. It used its weight to bowl her over, onto her back. She crashed into the ground below, with the Titan landing atop her front. Its stomach was almost flattening her abdomen.
She reached a hand behind its head and scraped and scratched the back of its neck, using her nails to gouge out the skin, and shove her fingers deep into the gashes to further dig out the flesh. It felt disgusting, and she could feel the Titan's flesh getting under her nails. Eventually, she dug her entire hand deep into the gashes and ripped out the flesh and skin. She threw the handful of flesh aside.
The Titan stopped, its arms flopping limply by her sides.
Athena's right hand grabbed the Titan's shoulder, and she pulled her leg up, planting the ball of her foot on the Titan's knee. With her hand and foot, she shoved it off of her, over to her left. Then, she rolled onto her right side, propping herself up on her palms.
"Athena! Are you alright?" Christa called out to her.
The back of her neck stung. Reaching under her hair, her left hand grazing the skin near her nape, she felt a few shallow gashes. She also felt those gashes beginning to stitch themselves back together, the skin almost immediately healing and her wounds closing up.
"I am healing. I should be fine," she finally said, pushing herself up to her feet. "There is no need to worry for me. I was just caught off-guard."
"We should get away from the gate. To a cleaner area of the Vanguard, at least, if you're feeling stubborn," Ymir told her, landing on Athena's right shoulder.
Athena spared a side-glance at Ymir, who stabilised her stance by grabbing a handful of Athena's blonde locks, her fingers digging into Athena's hair near the scalp.
Athena's eyes flicked forward. She'd already done some damage to this street, thanks to the fights she'd picked with each Titan she saw. She'd probably cause much less damage to this area by moving away to a new area she could defend – hopefully without causing a lot of damage to even more buildings, since these were homes that belonged to the people of this city.
"Where do you suggest we go, then?"
Shaye Shadiolus
~ Nearly two hours earlier, moments after Team RWBY's disappearance ~
For someone whose Semblance allowed her to see through illusions and hallucinations, and allowed her to see the truth of someone or a situation, the realisation that her Semblance hadn't allowed her to see what'd happened to Team RWBY in that white light turned out to be more jarring than she'd expected. Plus, she also couldn't locate any of their Auras, either, as if the fact they'd just up and gone – literally – hadn't been bad enough. After that bright light had faded, the team had apparently just... vanished. Off the face of Remnant.
And now, with whatever that device had done to the girls, it'd caused them to leave Shaye here to clean up the mess – on her own, no less.
Well, at least it didn't happen to be the first time she'd been left on her own. Or the first time she'd been left to clean up someone else's mess, either. That being said, Shaye could say that it did actually happen to be the first time she'd found herself dealing with both situations simultaneously.
To say Shaye was a bit pissed would've been a bit of an understatement.
She watched both devices drop to the ground, each hitting the concrete with a small thud. The container soon followed, Torchwick carelessly tossing it over the metal ramp, only for them both to watch it plummet down, until it hit the ground with a soft thud.
"Well, that takes care of those troublemakers. Still, I can't say I expected Little Red to be that stupid," Torchwick finally said, his well-known arrogance lacing a bit too much of his voice, while his tone betrayed a sense of... relief. "Say, Neo, how'd you suppose we should celebrate this job well done?"
A job well done? So, this was their plan all along? Then again, if escaping from the authorities had been their goal, they could've used those devices to vanish off the face of Remnant, just like those villagers and now, Ruby and her team. But they didn't. It was clear when he threw the devices and then that box, that he didn't really care for those devices or how he could use them to escape. Instead, he used them for the sole purpose of getting rid of Ruby's team, and perhaps me, too, if I'd been caught when that device activated. But now that their plan has worked and Ruby and her team are gone, they have no use for the devices anymore, and since they're now considered stolen property, if they're smart they wouldn't want to keep those devices.
All the better for Shaye, really, since she could either take those back to Professor Ozpin, or take them for herself and figure out a plan from there. She found herself leaning more towards the latter option. It'd give her a chance to go about finding out where Team RWBY had ended up, and what she to do next. And if she wanted to be optimist, she could also just give the devices back to Ozpin once she was done and Team RWBY was back on Remnant.
Resolving herself to that plan, her eyes glinted, though it would more likely be due to the light of the sunrise, rather than any sudden hint of passion in her eyes.
Gripping the sword form of her Lunar Gaze tighter and channelling her Aura into it, a translucent lilac sheen overtook the silver blade.
If I want to get anything done next, I have to make sure these two don't get away so easily.
She flash-stepped towards the joint where the wing was attached to the Bullhead's main body. With a swift swing, her blade sliced through the joint, splitting the wing from the body. She near-soundlessly sprang from the wing, somersaulted over the back of the Bullhead's roof, and twirled downward, cleanly severing the joint on the other side, where the right wing was attached to the main body.
The ball of one foot touched down on the wing, her other foot slipping behind her, landing a quiet step on the metal.
No longer attached to the wings, the Bullhead's main body plummeted and crashed hard, ploughing into the ground below and shattering the concrete around it. As a crater filled out under the Bullhead, the resulting wave of ruptured, upturned earth miraculously didn't manage to reach the devices on the ground.
A quiet sigh left her nose. Both severed wings started to fall towards one another. The lilac sheen flickered and faded from Lunar Gaze's blade.
She hopped from the wing, onto the Bullhead's roof, and down over the Bullhead's left side, landing in a roll a foot or two ahead of the metal platform attached to the bottom of the doorframe. Springing up and out of her roll, her free hand wrapped around the handle of the container. She yanked the box off the ground, skidding and swerving around where the two devices sat.
With haste, she returned Lunar Gaze to the harness across her back, and her now-free hand grabbed the bottom of the container. She crouched, gingerly scooping the cubed device into the box first, before collecting the ovoid device back into the box as well. Then, sitting the container on the ground, she clasped the lid shut.
"Looks like I missed one."
Shaye's hand wrapped around the handle on the box's lid, as her eyes flicked toward the open Bullhead door. Standing up, she shot a glare at Torchwick. "It looks like you might need to work on your Aura sensing abilities," she told him, holding the container by her side. Her other hand wrapped around Lunar Gaze's grip. "Also looks like you don't need these. So I'll be taking them. Come after me, and I will not hesitate to cut you down. I've already gone toe-to-toe with your friend back there, and I know you're not nearly as skilled as she is, despite your reputation."
A confident huff left Torchwick's throat, and he folded his arms, still holding his cane. "Do whatever you want. I'll be surprised if you manage to bring those girls back at all," he told her, leaning against the doorway, a smug look plastered on his face.
I hate to admit it, but without Madoka's intervention, I'd be surprised if I could bring them back to Remnant, too. Even just finding where they ended up might be a bitch to do on my own. Shaye kept her hand on Lunar Gaze's grip, and her gaze on Torchwick and the Bullhead, as she stalked away from the crash site, box in hand. For now, I'll just wait for the cops to show up. Someone's probably already called them by now, given the amount of ruckus that we caused here.
From her peripheral, she caught Yang's motorbike tilted on its side, laid abandoned not too far away from one of the warehouses, near the White Fang Lieutenant, still out cold on the ground. Once far enough away from Torchwick, she calmly jogged over to the motorbike, releasing Lunar Gaze's grip. Instead, she tilted the motorbike upright, and planted herself on the seat, before lifting the container to her mouth and biting on the lid handle, holding it between her teeth.
The buzz and then the growl of Yang's motorbike sounded a bit too noisy for what Shaye hoped would be a relatively quiet getaway, but it'd have to do. Yang wouldn't like it if Shaye just left it here, especially given it looked pretty customised, and likely would've costed quite a bit to even make, let alone maintain, unless Yang had to be maintaining it herself.
Regardless, she set off, back the same way Yang had originally entered the area. She passed by another small crater filled with spiderweb fractures, laid in front of the first warehouse of the row that was facing the broken Bullhead.
Weiss had been stationed on top of that warehouse.
That must be how Neo managed to get her. I wasn't looking over here at the time, so I wouldn't have seen Neo cast any illusions. That must be why I didn't hear that happen, she ascertained, rounding the corner and bolting down the street. I should train my Semblance some more. Perhaps I can evolve it to a point where it affects my other senses, like my hearing. Just because I can see through manipulations of reality, doesn't mean I'll always be able to hear or sense someone if they decide to execute those abilities while I'm preoccupied. If it happens again, simple spatial awareness might not cut it.
~ Currently ~
The sun, shining somewhat high in the bright blue sky above her, brightened her royal-blonde hair. Her blonde locks glistened. Bits of her fringe, as well as the top of her head, glinted gold.
I hope I'm right. I may have been talking mostly out of my ass at the time, but I still had some of those ideas going in anyway. Hell, my theories only started to make sense to me after I'd said them in the spur of the moment, but it does seem like a reasonable expectation that Team RWBY would at least now be in a similar world to Remnant. Whatever world that could be, since I don't believe any of us have been to any world with an atmosphere that was originally Dust-friendly without Madoka's intervention.
She crossed one leg over the other, resting one arm across her thighs. Her purple eyes narrowed at her bandaged hands.
Using her Aura to heal injuries bad enough that her Aura Guard won't heal them automatically was... something she barely knew how to do, to say the least.
She really hadn't expected Celaena and Amara to come after her as hard as they did – at least not to the point where they used enough force to break where her Aura Guard covered her hands. Even now, her knuckles still felt torn and scraped and bruised under the bandages, despite her effort to focus a little bit of her Aura Reserve into each set of knuckles. They felt a bit sensitive, too, as well as on her palms and between her fingers. They'd probably sting a bit more, if she hadn't been taught to grow at least this apathetic to physical pain and injuries.
Still, if this worked, then she'd have to visit Star afterward, anyway. Maybe if Shaye asked, Star would cast her Cura spell on her hands. From what Shaye knew about Star, the latter seemed to have quite a bit of experience using that spell to heal her own limbs and extremities, so doing the same for Shaye should probably only take a bit of convincing.
Somewhat heavy footfalls, sounding like they came from a pair of thick boots, approached from her left.
Sounds like Squall's here now. About time.
"I'm here. I brought my stuff."
Shaye lifted her head, sitting upright on the low stone wall surrounding the polished, pristine, concrete Huntsman and Grimm statue, which stood behind her.
Squall stopped a few feet to her right, dressed in his usual attire: his slim black pants, three belts wrapped around his right thigh, and three interconnecting red belts wrapped around his hips; his silver belt buckle, shaped like a lion's head, on the front of his hips; a black, sash-cape partially covering his right leg, reaching his right knee, with more fur decorating the top of the cape, the fur surrounding the back of his hips; a black-lined, fitted white shirt, which bore a chest-length V-neck plunge from his collar down the middle of his chest; a cropped, fitted, fur-collared black jacket; a pair of black gloves; and finally, a pair of black boots, each of them tucked under the hem of each pant leg. Under his left arm, he carried a briefcase-like matte-black box, silver décor decorating the faces and adorning the edges. The face of the flying lion he idolised, called Griever, adorned one of the faces of the box, in silver. The extendable, matte-black handle, on the longer, top side of the box, rested over Squall's shoulder, Squall holding the front, black, thin, metal pipe keeping the handle attached to the side of the box. There would be another, matching pipe over the other side of his left shoulder. In addition, his silver, metal Griever necklace laid around his neck, reaching just above the black lining of his shirt's collar.
"Is something wrong? You don't plan on going back on the decision to have me do this, right?"
Shaye blinked, momentarily closing her eyes, turning her head downward. "I don't plan on it. I just want to remain cautious, since we have no idea what we're getting into." She flicked her eyes back toward him. "You remember how to get in contact with Madoka, right?"
"I remember. I contacted her at least twice around the time I visited Soul Society to see what Ruby, Weiss, and Blake had been called there for, before you showed up after me. I can't remember if I've told you already, but she was the one who told me about the situation surrounding Rukia Kuchiki's execution."
"You already told me," Shaye reassured, blinking as she eyed him with concern. "Is everything alright with Shiva and Ifrit?"
Squall rolled his eyes. "Me getting a bit forgetful doesn't mean my memory's getting weaker again." He steadily met Shaye's gaze, his eyes making clear his intent to stay stubborn. His eyes briefly narrowed and he blinked, the expression fleeting and so smooth, she almost thought both of his eyes had just twitched, but she figured she could still use that brief expression to try and make out what he would be thinking. But the moment her eyes narrowed with scrutiny and met Squall's gaze again, he huffed through his nose and answered before she could try: "Fine. Shiva's alright. Ifrit's alright. Neither of them are bothering me or causing any problems with me or my memory." His gaze was averted as he said it. She could tell he was likely embarrassed.
"I swear, you're too uptight sometimes," Shaye deadpanned. "But whatever, it's good. Anyway, remember, if you ever need help, you can ask her to talk to the rest of us. If your Scroll doesn't work, that is."
"Got it," he said rather begrudgingly, as if he'd been told something of that same sentiment enough times to be tired of hearing it. "Speaking of which, why aren't we asking Madoka to send us wherever they are? She could just teleport us to their location without us using these devices and risking holding on to stolen property."
"I'm treating this as... an experiment, I guess. I want to work out what will happen to you and where you'll end up if you use these, rather than using Madoka to help you. Plus, seeing the effects of the device's activation could help me work out the distance required to not be caught up in the activation and transportation process."
"Which would be helpful for Star, if she decides to tag along later. I'm aware," Squall said, already sounding bored. "Still, I have a feeling you just don't want to go to Madoka for help."
Shaye averted her eyes. "Okay, maybe I think her abilities as a Goddess would be a bit too convenient for a situation like this." She shrugged. "So what? Besides, we both know how much neither one of us wants to depend on other people so much. I'm trying to find a solution to this situation without having to depend on Madoka to give us that solution. Besides, we could also use this opportunity to find out what happened to those villagers, and especially the guy that created these. It's been six years since they disappeared, so if that inventor was still alive, why hasn't he made another one of those devices to bring himself and the others back to Remnant? It just doesn't sit right with me." She crossed her arms. "Anyway, let's get this over with."
"It's about time."
Uncrossing her legs, Shaye stood up from the short border wall around the statue. On the ground, a few feet in front of her, the container for the devices sat, and she grabbed it by the handle attached to the lid. Unclasping the lid, she pulled it open, and carefully slid the container toward Squall, the lid flopping open.
Then she hopped around fifteen feet to her right, hoping it would be enough space. "Alright, I think this should be far enough away," she told him, turning to face him fully.
"If you say so." Squall shrugged and crouched in front of the container. "You're gonna take these devices to Star after this, right?" His eyes briefly flicked up to look at her.
Shaye nodded. "I will. You have my word." And if Squall knew her as well as she thought he did, then he'd know that Shaye happened to be the type of girl who didn't go back on her word.
Squall looked back down at the devices in the box. Holding his right hand by his thigh, a small, controlled, shining light generated in his gloved palm and shaped itself into a blade, before the light shimmered and dissipated, revealing his default gunblade, Revolver. Then, resting the gunblade on his shoulder, the blade hoisted behind his head, he grabbed the cubed device using his left hand.
Much like what had happened in the earlier hours of that same morning, the crystals embedded in each square face of the device brightened, as if lighting up. All the various Dust crystals produced rays of shining colours, each colour representing the Dust type of each crystal. Squall narrowed his eyes at the device, the rays shining as they danced across the nearby surrounding area. Then, all the crystals began to glow white, as did the veins on the device. A white veil spread from the veins and coated every square surface, covering the entire device in a white sheen. Silver embers and miniature snowflakes sparkled and whirled softly around the now-glowing white cube, which soon flashed and grew into a sphere which grew and grew, with Squall squeezing his eyes shut as the light encompassed him and his form, and the sphere sparking with small, faint, yellow bolts of lightning.
The light seemed to reach somewhere between five and ten feet, just narrowly avoiding making contact with the statue.
Then, with another flash of the sphere, the light suddenly shrunk back into the cubed device. The glowing white faded from the crystals and veins, and Squall seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Looks like it worked this time, too. And now I know how far enough away we need to be to avoid getting caught in that light. For now, though, I just have to hope for the best.
The device dropped back in the container.
Shaye approached the container, crouching by its side. A flick of her forefinger knocked the lid down and she clasped the lid shut again. Then, grabbing the handle and lifting the box off the ground, Shaye stood back up, her eyes scouring her surroundings. No-one appeared to be there, but that didn't mean no-one was watching.
After all, Professor Ozpin often implied he knew more than he would end up letting on, especially regarding a fair few adventures that their not-so-little "friend" group had found themselves wrapped up in.
Shaye sighed through her nose, letting the tension flood out of her shoulders, before aiming a bored, disinterested look back toward the dorms. Well, I guess it's time to pack my stuff and get ready. I'll go to Star when I'm done, so she'll be there to take the devices back once I've been transported, too.
Weiss Schnee
Weiss filed her nails as she waited alongside Eren's squad, named Squad 34, for the signal to move out. She'd heard from Eren that Ruby was going to be stationed in the Rear Guard with Mikasa, but hadn't heard where Yang was going, or whose squad she'd decided to be with.
Weiss spared a glance at Eren beside her. He's been helping us since we ended up here, and while I am glad that he's introduced us to more people that might be able to help us if he wasn't around... I'm not sure sure how I or the other girls would react if he got himself hurt. Or, hell, even killed.
"Are you seriously filing your nails right now?" Blake approached her from behind, hands on her hips.
"Give me something better to pass the time with and I wouldn't have to." Weiss stopped filing her nails. She eyed Blake over her shoulder. "Which squad is Yang with? You didn't say where she'd ended up."
"She's in the same squad as Spring, and two of Spring's friends, Christa and Ymir. Connie's also with them." Blake stepped closer to the edge of the rooftop, stopping only a bit away from the eaves and crouching. She pulled her Gambol Shroud off her back and unsheathed her katana, setting the sheath on her thighs. "Do you have one of those Dust cartridges?" She looked up at Weiss, holding the katana in her left hand.
Weiss shoved her hand into her silver pouch and dug through it, until she found what felt like one of the Dust cartridges she'd brought with her. Dragging the cartridge out of the pouch, she held it out for Blake. "That'd be a yes."
Blake offered a small smile at Weiss and took the cartridge, clipping it into the katana's hilt. "Thanks. Hey, by the way—"
"Hm?"
"Did you see that guy back at HQ? The Captain that led the assembly, with the beard and sunken eyes."
Weiss nodded. That man had been yelling out the orders and the plan to the Cadets during the assembly, and had threatened the Cadets with execution if any of them ended up deserting their posts. "Yeah, I remember him. What about him?"
"Maybe it was just me, but did you hear his voice crack? I mean, I understand why the Cadets would be scared; but he's a Captain, isn't he? Wouldn't he have trained longer than the Cadets have, and have more experience with the Titans? Shouldn't he be used to seeing them, and even fighting them to some degree?"
"Well, if he's been serving for as long as you think he has, maybe he witnessed Wall Maria being abandoned. He probably saw the Colossal and the Armoured before." Weiss shrugged her shoulders.
"I'm gonna have to debunk that," Eren piped up, standing at Blake's left. "If he were there, I'd recall seeing him in Shiganshina, or at least when we evacuated to Wall Rose. And even if he was there and I just didn't notice, I'd have heard him shouting since his voice is so damn loud. Besides, you maybe ought to know that he has a bit of a reputation for putting his own life before everyone else's and throwing a fit when someone tries to stop him. According to rumour, he'd probably accuse any of his soldiers of treason if they tried to stop him from getting off the battlefield, or even point his sword at you as a threat. Then again, that's just word of mouth."
"Rumours like that usually don't spawn from nothing. They're... pretty specific," Blake told him, her tone laced with as much concern as could be seen in the furrowing of her brows and the glint of her golden eyes. "If it turns out to be true, someone should do something about that guy. I realise it seems counterproductive to... throw away a Captain, to put it mildly, especially given the situation, but surely someone with that kind of track record when it comes to the treatment of his soldiers doesn't seem fit to be in a position of leadership."
"She's not wrong. Higher-ups in any military are supposed to be a guiding force, meant to inspire those they're in charge of leading. If those rumours turn out to have some weight to them, then he's doing everything that someone of his rank shouldn't be doing," Weiss added.
"Still, it's not like we can really do anything, though, right?" Eren shrugged. "I guess the only reason we've not gotten rid of him yet is because we're kinda desperate for soldiers to fight on the frontlines."
"Having more soldiers does not mean your army will be better. Isn't anyone in your military aware of the concept of quality over quantity?" Weiss slipped her nail filer back into her pouch and folded her arms.
The air picked up around the squad. An unseen pressure seemed to weigh on Weiss, though thanks to her and Blake's experience dealing with Spiritual Pressure from Soul Reapers, the pressure didn't faze them, or strain them, or feel constricting. While the others struggled to move, their tense muscles trembling and twitching upon each of them trying to move any body part, Weiss and Blake easily and almost effortlessly managed to look around, curious as to what was causing the pressure.
"I've felt this before," Blake muttered under her breath, grabbing her sheath. She carefully pushed herself up to stand. "I think someone else just used at least one of those devices to transport here."
"This is what happened when that light appeared. The one that dropped you guys here." Eren tried to move, his body twitching as he made to turn around. Given this had also happened earlier that morning, he seemed to have a slightly easier time moving; at least compared to Armin, who stood to Weiss' right.
As if on cue, yellow bolts flickered in a spherical pattern behind them, embers and flames spouting from the bolts, the flames thin and akin in shape to strings. As the bolts, embers, and flames spun around, revolving in a sphere, small snowflakes sparkled in the centre and softly shot outward. They formed a lace-like pattern on the surface, making the spherical shape more pronounced. More embers spat from the flames revolving around the surface. The embers headed towards the centre, only to collide with the snowflakes still gathered in the centre. From the collision, a translucent black-and-purple sphere formed, flickering as it grew bigger inside the lace-like sphere. Rays of various other colours seeped through the outside patterns of snowflakes and flames and embers, seemingly random sequences of colours leaking across the rooftops, shining in every direction – most notably on some of the cadets, and down the roads and streets between the houses.
An all-too-familiar presence seemed to practically fade into existence inside the darker sphere. Weiss could sense the fairly developed Aura from the presence, smiling once she recognised the familiar steel-blue outline which bore a cropped fur-collared jacket, and held the Revolver gunblade Ruby had once called 'one of the classics'.
"Looks like Squall followed us here." Weiss briefly looked at Blake. "He doesn't look like he can move in it, though. How did we get out of that, uh... ball of light?"
"I think Eren accidentally yanked Ruby out by her hand, and then the rest of us just followed out after her." Blake slid the sheath onto the katana. "And here I thought it would've been Shaye. Still, I guess she got the devices back, though," she pointed out, and as she swung her free right hand, she cast her ribbon into the sphere.
Soon, Blake's ribbon pulled taut. Yanking her hand back, the ribbon, still taut, drew back out of the spheres. Squall then burst from the darker sphere, before seeming to slip through the lace-like outer sphere as if he were intangible.
He was dressed in his usual attire, holding his gunblade in his gloved right hand, though while he carried a matte-black suitcase-like box, decorated in silver, under his arm, Blake's ribbon also laid wrapped around his waist. His black boots landed on the tiles, only a few feet away from Weiss and Blake.
The pressure faded then, and the various rays of colours flickered and drew back into the sphere, as the lace-like surface began to spin erratically. The surface shifted and revolved quicker and quicker in varying directions. Short bursts of bright rays of light started shining through the surface, rapidly moving across the surface while they shone, barely even reaching the tiles on the rooftop. Each ray spread to eclipse the lace-like surface in a bright light.
The sphere burst.
A blast of wind swirled from the burst, prompting Weiss to raise her free hand to cover her face. The yellow bolts that'd first appeared zapped and dissipated in the air. The snowflakes and embers burst outward, creating a scene looking almost like a firework display. The snowflakes sparkled while the embers spread in all directions.
Eventually, both the snowflakes and embers faded away, too.
"Wow. So, that was what you saw this morning?" Armin turned to Eren as he tried to fix and flatten his now-ruffled blond hair.
"Pretty much." Eren shrugged. He placed the heel of his left palm on his hip, what with the rest of his hand being wrapped around his sword handle, which had one of his sword blades attached to it. He faced Squall. "Who's he?"
"Squall Leonhart," Blake and Squall answered simultaneously. Blake pulled gently on her ribbon, and it unwrapped from around Squall's waist. The ribbon sprang back toward Blake's hand.
Squall stood up straight, resting the blade of his Revolver on his shoulder. His other hand stiffly came to rest on his hip. His blue eyes flicked between Blake and Weiss at least twice. "I wasn't expecting to find any of you so soon. Where are Ruby and Yang? And who are these two?"
"Well, that's Eren Jaeger," Weiss held an open palm out toward Eren, "and this is Armin Arlert. They're childhood friends." She gestured to Armin.
"Eren was one of the first people we met when we first arrived here, and has been helping us with everything that's going on," Blake told him. "His and Armin's other friend, Mikasa, is on the Rear Guard with Ruby. Yang chose to join the same squad as the daughter of the man who invented the devices. By the way, did Shaye send you here?"
"Yeah. She told me she'll be arriving later. A few hours, give or take. Depends on how long it takes for her to pack her entire arsenal and belongings, since she doesn't know what to expect."
"So she's coming in overprepared," Blake sighed.
"Anyway, what's the situation here? You mentioned Ruby being on the Rear Guard." Squall arched a brow at Blake.
"Monsters known as Titans have been dominating this land for over a hundred years, and just a short while ago, they invaded this city. It's called Trost District, by the way," Blake divulged, speaking with a bit of haste. "Anyway, the short of it is that the outer gate's been demolished, and Titans are now beginning to flood into Trost. Ruby and Mikasa are part of the squad responsible for making sure the civilians evacuate safely behind that wall over there, which is called Wall Rose." Raising her fist with a quirk of her forefinger, Blake motioned toward Wall Rose, behind Squall.
With a half-turn, Squall looked sidelong toward Wall Rose. "I see. I'm guessing they're also the last line of defence, right?" He looked back at Weiss and Blake.
"Yep. That squad's made up of the elites of the Garrison Regiment. Mikasa's the only Cadet on the team, apparently because she's just that good. You'll find the squad near the inner gate, close to where the civilians should be gathered." Weiss crossed her arms. "Anyway, please tell me you and Shaye had a plan before coming here."
Squall nodded. "Shaye was operating under the theory that your team had ended up in the same place as a bunch of villagers who went missing six years ago, thanks to those devices. And she thought if I went, I could prove the theory and find you. Once I found you, I was supposed to either contact her via Scroll, or through divine intervention from Madoka, who would be able to connect me to her telepathically. Actually, is there anywhere I can do that in peace, since I've found you all now?"
"HQ." Blake jerked her head in the direction of the Headquarters in Trost. "I'll be heading there anyway at some point, since I don't want to leave the place unguarded and unprotected. The supply team should be there, as well as one of the Captains that'll be commanding and supervising the supply team. When I get there, I can tell you how to go about fighting the Titans, since you're pretty much stuck here with us now. Stay away from the Captain, though, I'm pretty sure he'll be on edge."
"What do I do if I encounter any Titans on the way there?"
"Best to avoid them, for now. Or do what you have to in order to escape. Cut yourself free if you have to. I know you don't like running away from an enemy, but until you know how to kill them, it's best to avoid tiring yourself out in what would likely be a long, drawn-out battle," Weiss told him, briefly closing her eyes. "Oh, and you might want to keep your eye out for the other soldiers, too. They're gonna be fighting the Titans, and they use wires and grapple-hooks as part of their gear."
"It might also be best to avoid the ground and streets, too," Blake added.
"Crossing the rooftops seems faster, anyway. I'll get going, then," Squall spun on his heel and headed to the rooftop's edge, toward his right. "You'll probably find me in the central buildings," he told Blake, meeting her gaze. And with that, he flash-stepped away, dashing onto the next rooftop, and the one after, looking as if he was flying with how long he stayed in the air between leaps.
"Who was that guy?" Mina asked, approaching from toward the back of the rooftop, opposite Weiss and Blake. Her head was tilted, as she faced the direction in which Squall had gone. Thomas, Nack, and Milieus followed her, cautious and wary.
"That's a friend of ours. His name's Squall Leonhart," Blake told her, remaining unfazed when Mina blinked and seemed to pipe up at the name 'Leonhart'. "He's a lone wolf, for the most part. Likes to be independent. Yang and Shaye understand him on a more personal level than the rest of us do, but Ruby and Pyrrha also know him better as a fighter. Those two like him because they recognise him as one of their own: you know, a person born and bred to fight. More comfortable on the battlefield than during moments of calm or downtime."
Weiss swivelled in place, facing ahead of the rooftop on which their squad stood, arms still crossed. "He's somewhat closer to them than he is to us, but he's someone who prefers to keep to himself anyway. You would probably be hard-pressed to hear him admit that he considers any of those four his friends, let alone Blake or me."
Blake nodded her confirmation, twirling in place and facing forward as well. "Anyway, how long's it going to take for us to get the go-ahead?" She crouched down, her knees pressing together. She rested her forearms on her thighs, holding Gambol Shroud in front of her knees. "You think that female Titan we saw is still holding them off somehow?"
"I don't know," Eren piped up then. "I'd hope so, but... after what happened to the Advance Team, there's a chance she could've been overwhelmed, too. I don't think there's any telling whether the Titans would ignore her, since she's also a Titan, or whether they'll go after her because she's trying to stop them."
"In that case, maybe I should call Yang. She has a knack for being able to sense strong presences, so maybe she can track that Titan. That Titan should have a source for that energy she uses to fight and regenerate." Blake passed Gambol Shroud into her right hand, and turned over her now-free left hand, her closed, smaller Scroll stuck to her left wristband. Her right forefinger pressed the purple button in the centre of the white borders, the button shaped like Blake's belladonna flower emblem. The Scroll opened up, reaching from her backhand to her mid-forearm. After a few taps on the faded-black transparent screen, Yang's caller ID picture, surrounded by a bright-yellow square outline, appeared in the centre of the screen. A faded-yellow circle pulsed around the picture, the pulsing a visual representation of the audio from the "I Burn" song Yang used as her Scroll's ringtone. The song rang out quietly from Blake's Scroll, only thanks to Blake's preference for keeping the volume low.
That's weird... wouldn't the words 'Local Connection' show up on Blake's screen, since this call is happening through a local connection due to all of us being in Trost? Weiss' eyes narrowed curiously at Blake's Scroll.
Yang answered just as the song had been about to reach the first verse. "Blake! You alright?"
"I'm fine. Have you seen that female Titan we saw earlier?"
"Yeah! We're with her right now, actually – that's Spring, Christa, Ymir, and me. The other Titans kept managing to push our Titan girl further away from the gate but otherwise she's managed to hold her own just fine! Plus, we were with her every time she got knocked back. She seems a bit stubborn, though."
"Which area is she in now?"
"She's with us in another part of the Middle Guard. And she can talk! She told us that she's been a Titan for so long that she couldn't even remember her own original name when we asked her. So, we ended up giving her a new name. We named her Athena!"
"Wait, that girl Titan can talk?" Eren was suddenly leaning over Blake, his eyes narrowed at the Scroll.
"It sounds like Athena has as much intelligence as the Colossal, if not more." Armin hurried around Weiss' back to stand behind Blake. He crouched a bit behind Blake and Weiss, leaning forward and tilting his head, looking over Blake's right shoulder.
"Are you guys looking after Athena for the time being?" Blake asked.
"Yeah—well, we're trying to. She's doing a good enough job on her own. She's managed to kill several Titans by now, but she keeps trying to protect us and the other squads, and I think it might be a bit of a distraction. After she ran off in an effort to help a nearby Vanguard squad, a Titan took her by surprise and bit a chunk of her shoulder off while it was trying to get to her neck. I killed it before it could hurt her any more, but we still ended up getting her to move to the Middle Guard with us."
Weiss crouched beside Blake. "Is that Vanguard squad alright?"
"Hell if I know. We were too focused on getting Athena out of danger. Ymir did end up having to almost drag Christa away from the scene, though. Apparently Christa was worried about how bad that squad's situation looked."
"From what you've been saying, it sounds like it would've only been one of those Vanguard squads that looked like they'd been taken out, right?" Thomas approached them, standing a bit behind Blake and Eren. Mina, Nack, and Milieus joined the group, too, and now it felt crowded. Regardless, Thomas' tone carried obvious concern.
"Well, yeah. But if the Titans took out that squad like we're thinking, then they'd either move on to other Vanguard squads or use those gaps in our defences in order to get closer to the Middle Guard, further flooding Trost," Weiss told him. "And if that were the case, we'd have seen them near us already, and have gotten the call to head out a while ago, right?"
"Weiss is right. It happened probably no more than a couple of minutes ago, and also quite a distance away from you guys. In fact, Athena's searching our area of the Middle Guard and the Vanguard area up ahead of us, trying to look for those Titans. She thinks they could be somewhere in our area of the Middle Guard, since they'll wanna get to the inner gate, what with the civilians gathered there."
"So the sooner the Trost civilians manage to evacuate behind the inner gate, the longer the Titans will be left to roam free around Trost, without a main destination or goal..." Blake trailed off. Her eyes lost their focus, taking on a thousand-yard stare.
"Until the Armoured Titan comes back," Eren's voice sounded low, almost like a light snarl.
"If the Armoured Titan comes back." Weiss shot a side glance at Eren. "If this was just about causing as much chaos and destruction as possible, then I don't see why the Armoured hasn't already shown up. If the Colossal has the intelligence we think, then it would only be safe to assume the Armoured also has intelligence. And yet, why didn't he appear when we were going over the plan and preparing to join the fight? He had a chance to shatter the inner gate then and there, all the civilian lives be damned. Why didn't he take that chance, if the only purpose of the Titans seems to be just... killing anyone and everyone?"
"Yeah, I'm with Ice Queen on this one. Thinking any of the Titans would wait around just doesn't seem to make sense in this situation. By the way, earlier, Spring and I noticed some lights coming from where you guys should be. What was that?"
Blake blinked, her gaze seeming to focus again. "Oh, that was Squall. He showed up in the same... thing, whatever it was, that we came out of. Shaye had Squall use one of the devices and send himself here so he could find us, while she's busy packing in preparation to come here. I sent him over to HQ so that he could contact her through Madoka, and told him to wait for me there."
"Man, this just got a whole lot more interesting now that Squall's here. Especially since Mikasa told me that there's this girl called Annie in the top ten who's last name is also Leonhart. Isn't that weird?"
"Weirdly interesting, sure. Anyway, thanks, Yang."
"No problem. Happy hunting, you guys!"
Blake tapped 'END CALL', then tapped her purple belladonna-emblem-shaped button on her Scroll. The small Scroll closed atop the backhand side of her wristband.
That call hadn't been operating on a local connection. But how? If there were a CCT tower here, I'd know it. I would've recognised one instantly. Then again, given the inventor and his daughter being here, I wouldn't be surprised if either one of them had built a CCT tower further inside the walls. Perhaps in the innermost wall – Wall Sina, was it?
Weiss rose to her feet, cupping her chin between her finger and thumb.
"Is something wrong?" Armin asked as he stood up again, making his way back around Weiss. He stopped at her right, where he'd originally been standing. "You look like you're thinking pretty deeply about something." He tilted his head.
Weiss blinked at him, before briefly closing her eyes, waving her hand dismissively. "It's nothing, really. I was just thinking about everything I've been learning so far." She dropped her hand back down to her crossed arms. "Do you know anything about Spring's Dad – you know, the inventor?"
He blinked back at her, apparently taken aback by her question. But then he shook his head. "Can't say I know all that much about him. Spring hasn't seen or heard from her Dad since Wall Maria fell, and he never came to visit her during all our time in the Cadet Corps. Last anyone heard, he was going to build a new, larger-scale invention inside the interior of Wall Sina, but that's as far as anyone knows. One of Spring's family friends, an older girl called MC, who's also a member of the Scouts, has been trying to investigate his disappearance—oh! But we're trying to keep that on the down low, so not many people know about what she's doing. Only Eren and me, as well as Spring, Christa, Ymir, and a few of MC's friends in the Scout Regiment know about what she's doing."
Weiss shot him a bizarre look. Why would they want to keep the investigation under wraps? Limiting the number of people who even know he's at least missing would only put them at a disadvantage when it comes to finding him. The less people there are that know he's missing, the less people there would be who'd know that they should be looking for him. Weiss opened her mouth to ask him as much.
"Squad Thirty-Four, move out!" came the shout from a Garrison soldier on a nearby rooftop. Weiss closed her mouth, deciding to save her questions for later. Instead, she side-eyed the two men stood stationed on the nearby rooftop, as another shout came from seemingly the same soldier: "The Vanguard needs support!"
"Looks like we're up." Blake planted her empty left hand on her hip.
That does not bode well. Not after our call with Yang. Weiss' hand wrapped around Myrtenaster's grip. Pulling her weapon smoothly off her belt, she twirled the sword in her left hand, and with a half-hearted underarm swing, a road of black glyphs spun to life before her. They led to the edge of the rooftop belonging to the building a couple metres in front of the group. Still, I can't afford to let those kinds of uncertainties distract me.
Weiss sprang with a Flash-Step, dashing with increasing speed across the road of glyphs. Blake's Gambol Shroud darted past Weiss, lodging itself in the dull, drab wall of the same building, followed by Blake widely swinging from the ribbon attached to the hilt, not too far below Weiss' road of glyphs.
Eren raised his right sword, his steady gaze sweeping over the group. "Right! Give 'em hell!"
A roaring cheer erupted from the Cadets behind her, and Squad 34 set off across the rooftops.
Weiss' hair ruffled and fluttered in the wind streaming past her, as she dashed across another road of glyphs, almost a blur of mostly-white thanks to her speed. Then, the sole of her boot hit the edge of the approaching rooftop, and she somersaulted across the canopy, over the gabled roof dormers, bouncing from another glyph just a bit beyond the approaching edge of the rooftop's other side. A light-blue light pulsed across the glyph, from the centre outward, as Weiss sprang from it, before that glyph spun and faded into thin air once Weiss was practically flying through the air again.
Beside her, Blake glided through the air, swinging from the ribbon attached to Gambol Shroud's pistol-hilt. Swinging high up into the air, she tugged on the ribbon, the action pulling her Gambol Shroud from the windowsill belonging to the window at the front of a roof dormer, which sat on the roof of a building along the opposite side of the street from where Weiss was flying. As Blake's sword darted back toward her, the ribbon springing back toward her along with Gambol Shroud, Blake drew back into a mid-air backflip. Gambol Shroud spun on its way toward Blake until her right hand caught the hilt. Then, with a jerk forward of her empty left hand, Blake threw the ribbon wrapped around her hand at a short, dull-orange chimney pipe belonging to the centre building at the end of the street, between the two rows of houses. The ribbon circled twice around the chimney pipe, tightening around the pipe. Grip tightening on Gambol Shroud and the hand-ribbon, Blake swiftly shot forward from one of her shadows, courtesy of her Shadow Semblance.
A pair of wires zipped past Weiss, the grapple-hooks lodging themselves in the wall of the same building at the end of the street. An audible burst of gas spewed from the emission belonging to one of the Cadets, and soon Mina was flying a few feet to Weiss' right.
Mina wore a warm smile on her face as she passed a friendly, sidelong glance at Weiss. "Hey, I've been meaning to ask – how do you... do that? Make those circles... or, uh, glyphs, you called them, right?"
"My Glyph Semblance is an ability specific to my family and me. It's made from my Aura, and my Aura is what allows me and my teammates to use our Semblances." A glyph spun to life above the ridge of the dull-brown roof belonging to the following building's roof dormer. As Weiss' feet landed on and bounced off the glyph, a thin wave of light-blue rippled across its surface, and as she took off into the air again, the glyph faded into thin air.
She spared a sidelong glance at Mina, who glided through the air, above the streets, propelled by the gas filtering from the emission strapped to the small of her back, while her wires pulled her forward. Prompted by a press of both of the steel levers, which each hung over the two triggers attached to each sword handle, more of the gas from her canisters burst from the narrow slot in the emission.
"And what's Blake's Semblance?"
"Her Semblance is called Shadow. It allows her to create shadow-clones of herself, which are fairly solid. She usually uses them to either take a hit for her or push her in any direction she chooses."
"Oh, I see. And that Dust cartridge you gave her...?"
"She can use the Dust in that cartridge to give her Shadows the properties of whichever type of Dust she decides to use. Shadows affected by Ice and Earth Dust turn into solid statues, and Shadows affected by Burn Dust become bombs that she can use to counterattack an enemy." Weiss sprang from a glyph that spun to life over a gap between two rooftops, the glyph fading behind her as she easily landed on the rim of a short chimney pipe. Bouncing from the chimney pipe, Weiss landed on the canopy of the rooftop. "I've got my own questions, too," she called out then, sparing another glance at Mina, as she took off in a sprint across the canopy, towards the building ahead. "How do the Titans cause so much death and destruction? What's their method of attack? Do they rely on their size and their basic primal instincts? Or do they have intelligence like the Colossal Titan?"
The questions had been lingering on her mind since the battle against the Colossal Titan. None of them seemed to have anywhere near the intelligence of the Colossal Titan, or the foresight to plan ahead. When she, Yang, and Blake had seen the Titans just after they'd arrived in this world, the other Titans had been scratching and clawing at the bottom of the wall. If they had intelligence like the Colossal, then they could've worked together to break down the gate themselves, much like how the Nevermore and Deathstalker had grown smart enough to cooperate with each other and combine their abilities to try and take down Ruby during the Beacon Academy Initiation. But instead, it seemed like they were more-so opportunistic in their methods of invasion. And considering the fact the Colossal disappeared after opening up an entrance where the gate used to be, he or whoever summoned him would've had to know that the Titans would simply take the opportunity to invade and conquer.
But for the Titans to get past the Advance Team and the canons they would've apparently set up, according to Armin back when she'd been talking to him at HQ, they would've had to be quite persistent and driven to get inside the walls. Like a predator determined to endure whatever it had to endure in order to catch its prey.
Mina blinked at her, expression incredulous, as if she'd just seen Weiss grow a second head. "You mean you don't know how the Titans kill people?"
Weiss sprang from the edge of the canopy, high into the air, before her feet hit the rooftop of the next building and she scurried toward the dormer a couple of metres ahead. "No-one's told me yet. It's been on my mind for a while now," she only offered in response, as she sprang into a somersault over the dormer. Landing over the other side, Weiss swiftly bounced into another sprint.
Mina's expression became a mixture of conflicted and haunted for a second, as she appeared to consider her answer. Then, she gulped, but answered nonetheless.
"They... eat... people. If we don't kill them, then the Titans just grab us, and eat us alive. They don't need to eat us, though, because they don't have digestive tracks. It... it's assumed they kill us just for sport."
Weiss could only blink back at Mina this time. Her stomach churned upon the information sinking in, the idea of someone being eaten alive soon becoming a series of split-second flashes behind Weiss' eyes of worst-case scenarios, featuring the Cadets caught between macabre grins belonging to the freaky humanoid giants hunting them, and her teammates weak and worn down, slumped over while they were being gripped harshly in large, closed fists being raised up toward open mouths. A lot of blood, far too much blood than Weiss had ever been prepared to see, spurted from where each set of large, oversized teeth bit down on each Cadet. As more blood spilled, Weiss started to understand why Ruby used to freak out when she had to deal with blood being spilt during their first visit to Soul Society—
Weiss' boot caught on a tile. She stumbled, the momentum from her sprint causing her to trip up, her legs feeling about as stable as jelly. She began to fall, careening toward the tiles. She blinked rapidly a couple of times, the ideas and flashes of her comrades being slaughtered soon vanishing just as quickly as it took one of Blake's ribbons to wrap around her midriff.
The ribbon tightened. Weiss' eyes flicked towards Blake, who now stood on the roof of the building at the end of the street, her left arm outstretched, hoisted in Weiss' direction and the ribbon around her hand leading back towards the one wrapped around Weiss. She'd stopped Weiss' fall, sparing Weiss' dignity and self-respect in the process.
Then, with a firm, quick, steady flick of her arm, Blake yanked Weiss high up off her own rooftop, the ribbon continually pulling taut as it – and by extension, Weiss – receded towards Blake. Eventually, Weiss was pulled towards her own left as her feet dropped and skidded on the tiles. She stopped a few feet to Blake's left, legs still not exactly stable, but still with enough strength to stand.
"What's wrong?" Blake tugged at her ribbon. As it unravelled from Weiss' midriff, it sprang back toward Blake, until she caught the end of the ribbon in her hand. "It's not like you to lose focus like that without a reason. Your legs are shaking, too, and you look like you're about to throw up. Seriously; I'd even go as far as to say that you actually look like you're ill, with how much paler you just got. So, what's wrong?" She planted Gambol Shroud on her back and held her open hands out, reaching for Weiss.
"I asked Mina how the Titans kill people," Weiss' voice sounded hollow to her own ears, almost barely above a whisper. "The Titans kill them by eating them alive. The usual Titans, I guess. The Colossal, the Armoured, and that girl Titan Athena are all outliers, but the run-of-the-mill ones? They—they eat any living human being they can get their hands on."
"Oh." Blake's hands faltered. Then, she asked: "I just realised... you've never seen a Grimm do that, have you? Eat a person, I mean. The flying types of Grimm that resemble birds will do that occasionally if you're not careful. The Nevermore from Beacon's Initiation looked like it was about to eat Yang at one point during that fight too. The Titans eating people is absolutely horrific, especially when you take into account the Cadets and the civilian kids that are gonna be gathered at the gate, but that just makes the Titans all the more similar to a lot of the Grimm. Considering how much it's disturbed you, I guess I must've overestimated just how much you've seen of the world outside Atlas."
I should've figured that someone who grew up outside the kingdoms wouldn't really be fazed by the cruelty happening around them. If anything, I'd say Blake's pretty much more bothered that I grew up pampered and protected from the outside world, since it's apparently made me softer than I thought.
"Hey, I'm not judging you—well, not much, anyway. It might sound like a... a horrible thing to have to say, but you'll probably become desensitized to seeing that kind of cruelty once it becomes a normal occurrence. And it will, especially on a battlefield like this." And with that, Blake's left hand gently grabbed Weiss' right wrist, and carefully pulled her closer. Blake's right hand moved to support Weiss' left upper arm. Blake twisted halfway, facing the rest of Squad 34. "Hey! Weiss is gonna need to hang back for a second! We'll set off in front, and hopefully Weiss can offer support from the back!"
Weiss sighed through her nose. Great. Now I'm not only soft, but turning into a burden as well.
…Yeah, like hell she was going to just sit aside while they all put their lives on the line. She was not going to turn into their burden. Not now. Not before the main fight had even started.
Get yourself together. You had a scare. So what? All you have to do now is try to stop those worst-case scenarios from becoming reality, for you and for those Cadets. Weiss took a deep breath, her hand tightening around Myrtenaster's grip. Her shoulders relaxed. She straightened her posture, shifting her feet, while her legs started to stop wobbling and her balance stabilised. She faced forward, with her back toward Squad 34. "It's alright. I'm—I'll be fine. I can go on ahead. I will not be anyone's burden."
From her peripheral, Weiss noticed Blake aiming a small, knowing, somewhat sly smile at her, from the side. "Nice to see your defiance back in action. And you're also looking a little healthier, too. Good to see that was all you needed."
Damn! So that was just a ruse to get me fired up?!
Blake threw another look over her shoulder again, raising her hand reassuringly to the Cadets. "Nevermind! She's getting back into gear! She's gonna go on ahead!"
"You guys! Don't scare us like that!" Eren shouted, sounding somewhat exasperated.
"Sorry," Blake sheepishly called, before turning back to Weiss. "Alright, come on," she dropped her hand, "you said you were going on ahead, right? I'll hang back and look out for any Titans that might come from other angles."
Weiss nodded. "Just don't get yourself compromised for the sake of someone else. Ideally, I want all of us to be able to return to Beacon alive and in one piece."
And with that, a glyph spun to life under Weiss' feet, and she launched toward the centre of the street ahead. High in the air, above the rooftops of the buildings lining either side of the street, she vertically twirled Myrtenaster in her left hand, the blade rolling backward once before she smoothly made an underarm swing, creating an entire road of five glyphs in front of her again. As she landed on the first glyph, she set off in a dash, zipping across the glyphs and somersaulting – fairly majestically, she thought – from the last glyph.
She barely registered the wires and grapple-hooks zipping past her, though she did note the sounds of gas being blasted a bit more harshly from a few emissions.
"There's so many of them!" Mina called out then, sounding not too far behind Weiss.
With another backward twirl and underarm swing of Myrtenaster, another five glyphs spun to life before Weiss. She landed on the first glyph, her legs a bit bent at the knees in a half-crouch, and her eyes darted across the landscape over the top of the buildings laid out several metres ahead of her. Over to her right, on a street with what appeared to be some kind of tower, at least a couple concerningly large splatters and splodges of blood seemed to decorate the rooftops and higher-up windows belonging to the buildings lining the street. A few Titans, at least one of them looking pretty emaciated, roamed between the buildings – at least, the ones tall enough to be seen over the rooftops. For all Weiss knew, there could be smaller Titans roaming around the lower ground.
I'm guessing that's where one of the Vanguard squads had been stationed.
"The Vanguard's been completely overwhelmed!"
I mean, I wouldn't say completely. There are still other squads taking up the Vanguard, right? Just because one looks like it's been taken out doesn't mean the rest of them have.
"I don't believe this! Those guys always talk so big!"
That being said, I'm pretty sure the chances of those other squads still being alive would look pretty slim right about now.
Weiss dashed forward, skating across the glyphs, each glyph spinning, retracting, and fading once she passed them. She sprang from the last glyph, leaping forward, past what she figured to be an observation tower, standing to her right. She flew high up in the air, above the rooftops. In her peripheral, she caught Thomas trying to catch up with her, as he swerved around that same tower to her right, firing another wire ahead of him while he zipped squarely in front of the tower's wall.
A Titan sprang from the ground. Perhaps from the ground of the street where the other Titans were roaming. As it hopped almost effortlessly over the rooftops ahead of them, from towards the right of where Weiss and Thomas were, aiming for one or both of them. With its arms and legs somewhat splayed out, it almost gave Weiss the impression that it could've been trying to imitate a cricket or a grasshopper, and looked both careless and like it had to be next to weightless despite its size.
"WE'VE GOT AN ABNORMAL! PULL BACK!" Eren called. Weiss barely registered the sound of his and almost everyone else's wires zipping further back.
"Thomas, MOVE!" Weiss added, damn-near screaming, as she twirled and jabbed Myrtenaster forward. A large glyph, the size of the Abnormal Titan's head, spun as it opened up in front of the Abnormal, as if to block it off from them.
Long story short, it turned out to be absolutely useless, as the force of the Abnormal Titan barrelling toward them ended up being enough to shatter the glyph in just one hit. The resulting blast of pressure sent Weiss flying back, toward the building at the back of the street they'd only just passed onto. She rolled into a backflip and activated the Gravity Dust loaded into Myrtenaster's revolver chamber, and with a flick of her right index and middle fingers, she shot a black-and-purple spark at the wall of the building, just under the rooftop's eaves. A purple-lined black gravity glyph spun to life on the wall, and she landed on it, planting her right fingertips on the glyph, as well as the ball of her right foot, though she stuck to the glyph regardless.
The Abnormal hit the observation tower face-first, the impact rattling the tower with a crashing blast. The windows, built into every side down the length of the tower, shattered instantly, the glass being blown out from the same force that caused fractures and cracks to litter the stone which made up the tower. The Abnormal's limbs looked to be loosely hugging the tower walls.
Did Thomas get out the way in time? I have to take a head count; see if he's here and if anyone else is missing. Weiss' eyes instantly darted to either side of her place on the wall. She found Eren hanging from a wire close by, at her right, holding his sword between the his palm and where a few of his fingers gripped the eaves. From what she could tell, he looked a bit shaken up, but unharmed nonetheless, as far as Weiss could see. Next, Weiss angled her head, wanting to see whoever stood atop the tiles now – whoever had made it. She could sense Blake's presence up there, almost as if she hadn't even moved since their reassuring moment earlier. Weiss also caught a glimpse of Armin and Mina sitting by either side of Blake's legs, and then Nack and Milieus both standing to the right of where Armin sat.
Right, so there were five people currently accounted for: Eren, Blake, Armin, Mina, Nack, and Milieus.
The only person missing...
Shit. Looks like that Titan definitely got Thomas. It would be a miracle if he'd escaped that.
The Abnormal Titan moved its head, peeking around the wall of the tower with its chin tilted up a bit. Its lips were parted, and between its teeth, Thomas hung by his right thigh and left lower-leg. Blood was starting to seep out from where the teeth dug into each leg. His left leg was slightly bent at the knee.
"Oh my god... please.. help... me..."
Small spots of saliva dotted his face. Shock and fear were all that could be read in his eyes, as he stared at the group. He still held his swords in his hands, though his grip looked loose, and the metal sheath box that'd been stuck to his right thigh was missing. With some luck, the Titan would've scraped it off his leg and accidentally swallowed it when they crashed into the tower. If the Titans can eat what they want at any given opportunity, then they can also choke on what they eat when it ends up going down the wrong hole, right?
Somehow, she doubted it.
"Blake! Get Thomas before that thing—!"
"You don't have to tell me twice, Weiss!"
Both of Blake's ribbons darted towards Thomas just as the Abnormal began tilting its head further back. Blake's ribbons wrapped around Thomas' midriff and the apex of his thighs, a bit above where the teeth were biting down on his right thigh, and causing more and more blood to spurt out of his ever-deepening wounds. Blake had to have yanked her ribbons back at that moment, because then, Thomas was ripped away, just as the Titan's teeth finally closed shut on his legs.
Streams of blood splashed from between the Titan's teeth and—and the parts of Thomas' legs that remained. Brief, loose, and fluid strings of crimson, which had only spent just a second or two connecting Thomas' legs to the Titan's parted lips and teeth, split between them and spilled toward the ground below, splattering along the concrete ground.
As Thomas was pulled back toward them, hanging almost limply in the two ribbons, the Abnormal Titan closed its mouth and turned its head away from Thomas, and the rest of the group by extension. Almost as if it was satisfied having eaten only Thomas' legs. It hopped off the tower and into the middle of the street, and stood to its full height, its back turned towards the group.
And just like that, it began... walking away. Strolling, ever so calmly, back down the street.
Eren growled beside her. His rage seemed damn-near palpable. Weiss braced herself, but that didn't stop him from letting out a blood-curdling yell, almost like a roar.
"You... YOU BASTARD!"
Weiss counted herself lucky that his anger and outburst didn't cause her to instinctively flinch or at least grow tense – this time. So, it seemed she had to be getting a bit of a handle on that decade-old habit. Well, either that, or because as of thus far, Eren had never directed any of his anger towards Weiss herself.
With a hiss of his emission, Eren fired his wires straight ahead, and launched forth, propelled by the gas bursting from his emission. He passed by Thomas, their eyes barely meeting, as Eren sprang forward, towards the Abnormal Titan, and Thomas sprang backward, towards the group.
"EREN!" That scream sounded like it came from Armin.
"Wait! Stay with the group!" Was that Nack or Milieus? Hell if Weiss knew.
While Thomas disappeared over the top of the rooftop above Weiss, with him likely ending up caught in Blake's arms, Weiss prepared to go after Eren, the outer rings and her emblem from her gravity glyph spinning before Weiss launched from the glyph, high and far into the air. As she watched Eren swing low on his wires, perhaps attempting to glide across the street's stone ground but more or less barely scraping his knees as he blasted further on, swerving under an arch that seemed to form some kind of makeshift bridge between two towers, one attached to a building on either side of the street up. They looked like observation towers – similar to the one they'd almost passed just moments ago.
They'd be better put to use as watchtowers, or perhaps even sniper posts.
…Actually, on second thought, that'd be a good idea—
"GET BACK HERE! You're gonna pay for doing that to Thomas, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"
"No, you get back here, damn you!" Weiss yelled at him, bouncing from a glyph. Her flexed right-hand fingertips met the top of the arch, and she sprang forward from those fingertips, launching forth into a somersault. "You're gonna end up just like Thomas if you keep going with that tunnel-vision, you dolt!" She twirled Myrtenaster in another backward spin, and with an underarm swing that veered towards her right, she created a road of seven large glyphs leading diagonally to a house up ahead to her right.
She somersaulted from the centre of each one onto the next, until she twirled onto the house's rooftop and took off in a mad dash. A few houses in front of her, Eren swung himself high, blades poised and ready to swing, rapidly approaching the Abnormal's back as he spun forward through the air, rising up toward the rooftops and swerving just over the top of the tiles as he neared a gap between the houses. The gap seemed to act as a split that led onto a different street.
And from the gap, another open-mouthed Titan sprang up. As Eren flew overhead, completely oblivious, it snapped its jaw shut. Catching Eren's left leg in-between its teeth, its sudden, almost clean bite severed his lower leg from in an instant, barely sparing his knee.
And just like that, the Titan slipped back down between the buildings.
Eren quickly tumbled out of the air, crashing onto the next rooftop and barrelling across it and then a few more rooftops, tearing the tiles from their places and ripping up a path between the torn-up tiles across a few rooftops. Soon, he bumped into the roof of a dormer and bounced from it onto another one, as his left sword slipped from his hand and flung away. He hit a third dormer, then, and flew forward, before landing on his front, bouncing a little from the impact before skidding forth across the tiles, digging up a path again.
He finally stopped, then, his arms and legs splayed out ahead of him, either side of his head.
"Well, shit," Weiss snarled under her breath, sliding her left leg in front of her and skidding to a stop at the edge of the gap between the row of buildings. She glanced back toward the building where she managed to see Blake using a Status-Freezing Prism on Thomas, creating a flat-surfaced, translucent, square-shaped, violet prism of her Aura from her crossed palms, which hovered above where Thomas lay almost flat on the rooftop. After a somewhat cuboid prism surrounded Thomas' form, and Blake imprinted her belladonna emblem across the top face of the prism in a darker shade of purple, Blake turned on her heel and proceeded to scour the area, before her gaze soon met Weiss'. Weiss raised her arm and waved. "Eren's hurt! I need you to do your best to take care of the others closest to your location! And watch out for the wider alleys and gaps between the houses! It seems like the Titans are trying to take us by surprise!" Weiss yelled as clearly as she could, considering just how loud she happened to be shouting.
Blake waved her arm up high, giving off a sense of understanding through a soft spike of her Aura, the message quickly being picked up by Weiss. "Got it! Also, watch out for Armin, he'll be the closest to your location! For now, focus on taking care of Eren!"
"You don't have to tell me twice!"
Weiss swivelled in place and dropped her arm. Leaning cautiously over the gap, she eyed the Titan that'd sprung up to maim Eren only moment or two ago.
It looked fairly small, bigger than five metres but smaller than ten metres, as it sat crouched in the space between the buildings, staring up at the rooftops, waiting. And waiting patiently, it seemed, with its hands laid carelessly atop its kneecaps, its thighs almost pressing to its chest, its back set straight and muscles tense almost as if it was preparing to jump, and its head tilted almost all the way back.
If I try to cross that gap to get to Eren, that thing will likely spring back up to catch me between its teeth too. But if I leave Eren on his own and defenceless while I'm trying to deal with this Titan, then he might bleed out and die before I can get to him. Shit—wait, Armin! Weiss' eyes darted to the rooftops of the other buildings until she caught sight of Armin standing on the rooftop of a building across from her, on the other side of the street. He stood near the ridge of the rooftop, his body almost blocking a dormer beside him. Weiss threw her free hand up high. "Armin!"
Armin blinked before his eyes flicked toward her.
Weiss flung her arm out in Eren's direction, forefinger poised and aimed at the rooftop Eren was laying splayed out on. "I need you to get Eren! This Titan's waiting for another one of us to make his mistake and kill us, so I need you to get Eren and take him back to where Blake put Thomas! I'll deal with this Titan!
Armin blinked again, more taken aback this time. Then, his eyes flicked toward Eren, and, glancing back at Weiss, he nodded, hesitant but seemingly somewhat sure of himself. "Of course! Good luck!" And like that, he fired his grapple-hooks toward Eren and launched from the rooftop, propelled by a burst of his gas.
Weiss turned back toward the Titan again.
With it sat like that, and its head that far back, I don't think I can get to its weak-spot. I need to bring it up here, somehow. Weiss shot a glance at Myrtenaster's Dust chamber, then at the metallic, silver Dust bracelet wrapped securely around her right wrist. Gravity...
Activating the Gravity Dust embedded into her right Dust bracelet, a black-and-purple spark gathered at the tips of her flexed right index and middle fingers. Flicking the flexed fingers forward, down toward the Titan, the spark hit the nose of the Titan's face and split into a small pulse of translucent black. The next moment, a violet glow sparked around the Titan, before a sparkling, translucent purple outline surrounded its entire form. Weiss flicked her fingers up toward the sky, pulling the Titan up from the ground using the Gravity Dust's hold on it, before opening her right hand entirely and flexing all of her fingers, moving the Titan's head, tilting it forward, as she rolled the Titan in mid-air, its back and neck rising to line up with the edges of the two rooftops. Once its front was facing downward, its head set straight while it faced the ground below, Weiss released her Gravity Dust and the sparkling, translucent purple glow faded.
As the Titan began to fall, she sprang from the rooftop, her Aura focused in Myrtenaster's blade, a light-blue glint shining along the length of her silver blade. Spinning over the back of the Titan's neck, her blade sliced through the weak-spot at least three times before she passed over the other side of the Titan. She skipped upon her landing atop the other rooftop.
The Titan dropped out of the air, limp, before landing with a hard crash on the ground. The stone of the pavement tore up and cracked all around the Titan's body, the Titan's weight and force of its crash causing fractures to litter the ground, surrounding the Titan's corpse.
Right, that's done, Weiss sighed through her nose. Then, from her left peripheral, she caught steam rising from her arm, hand, and from Myrtenaster. Lifting her hand and blade, she found blood splattered across her jacket's left, elbow-length sleeve, disturbing the outside white coating, as well as the black frills attached to the edge of the sleeve. Splodges of red had also landed atop her black gloves, and the red-lined fingerless white tekkō (which Byakuya had given her back in Soul Society) that laid above those gloves, covering half of each forearm. Blood also stained the skin across her left elbow, and the length of Myrtenaster's blade. Splatters of scarlet laid across the Dust chamber and a bit of the grip, too. Despite the amount of Titan blood that'd splashed onto her, it did seem to be... evaporating, and into steam, as far as Weiss could see. Well, at least Titan blood doesn't stain. For long, anyway.
Weiss dropped her arm, leaving the blood to evaporate on its own, as she swivelled in place, eyes flicking to the rooftop where Eren had landed earlier.
Armin sat crouched on one knee beside Eren. He seemed to be trying to lift Eren up off the tiles, perhaps in an attempt to either carry Eren in his arms or on his back. Weiss barely caught Armin's gaze quickly flicking between Eren's eyes, which had become surrounded by blood that appeared to originate from his forehead, likely the result of a head injury he must've received when he landed face-first across the tiles, and the metal sheaths still miraculously attached to Eren's thighs.
Weiss set off towards the two. "Armin! What's the holdup?!"
Armin's head shot up. As she neared them, Weiss finally noticed the tears that'd gathered in his eyes, threatening to spill out. His bright, ocean-blue irises trembled.
After hopping across the roof ridges of a few dormers, she skidded to a halt only a few feet away from Armin and Eren. "Look, I know he's your friend and it's obvious you'd be worried for him – hell, just look at the state of him – but you'd do well to pull yourself together. If not for your own sake, then for his. Do you understand?"
"I..." Armin's voice sounded light, breathy, and definitely as shaky as his irises. Despite that, he pressed his lips together and nodded, as if he'd just grasped at least a scrap or two of some sort of confidence and clarity. "I understand. If... if it's not too much trouble—"
"What is it?"
"...Can you help me put him on my back so I can carry him more efficiently? He's not exactly responsive."
Weiss released a harsh huff from her nose, but shrugged her shoulders. "Alright, sure. Step aside." She stabbed Myrtenaster's blade into the tiles.
Armin passed Eren into her hands and moved away a bit as she grabbed Eren by his underarms, carefully lifting him upright. Holding up Eren's arms, she hung them over Armin's shoulders, before gingerly pushing Eren's head to rest beside Armin's. Then, as she grabbed Eren's legs and sat him atop the emission stuck to the small of Armin's back, the building trembled, jolting the three of them.
Another quake, this time closer to their building, prompted Weiss to look up – to her left, where the quake had seemed to originate.
A grey-bearded Titan stood close to the building, its head and shoulders towering over the rooftop. When it took a step forward, the ground trembled as if its foot had stomped on the concrete, causing the surrounding area to quake again. It was approaching the three of them.
"Seriously? Now?" A corner of Weiss' lips twitched as she bared her teeth, a cross-vein appearing between her temple and forehead. Shaking her head to free her face of that nasty expression, she released her hold on Eren and stood, moving to grab Myrtenaster. Wrapping her hand around her weapon's grip, she told Armin: "I'll sort this Titan out while you get away with Eren."
Armin looked at her over his shoulder, meeting Weiss' gaze, before he nodded and hooked his wrist under Eren's remaining whole leg.
Tugging Myrtenaster out of the tiles, she turned away from him and faced the bearded Titan. She twirled Myrtenaster in her hand. Then, she took off in a Flash-Step, blade poised over to her right and aimed almost behind her, the Dust chamber spinning and locking on Burn Dust. She flexed her right index and middle fingers again, drawing them from the crossguard down the length of the blade, a flame following her fingertips all the while.
The bearded Titan took another step toward her and raised its hand. As its knuckles barely reached the height of the rooftop, Weiss hopped from the rooftop and onto its backhand. Her fingertips flew off the tip of her blade, the flame dispersing into embers, as she fired a fiery-red spark down at the skin of the knuckles behind her. The spark opened up into a burn glyph spanning across the entire backhand, and Weiss took off in a dash up the arm. From every other step, she left behind one burn glyph after another. After creating a last burn glyph on its shoulder, she sprang from it and twirled in the air behind the Titan's head, before swiftly swinging her sword upward, pointing the tip directly at the sky.
The burn glyphs all soon faded to a scarlet hue and exploded along the Titan's arm. Once the shoulder burn glyph exploded, the Titan's arm dropped from the rest of its body, the force of the blast ripping it from the socket.
Its remaining hand bashed into the rooftop beside it.
Summoning a glyph under her feet, Weiss bounced onto its remaining shoulder, ahead to her right. As soon as her heels made contact with the Titan's skin, it yanked its hand back, jolting the arm in the process, and prompting Weiss to hop onto the roof ridge of the dormer close to the Titan's elbow.
Once standing atop the dormer, her clearer view of the Titan's hand allowed her to see the way its fingers curled, almost like claws, around both Eren and Armin.
As it lifted both of them up to its mouth, a fair few tiles, and the dust coming from any tiles it'd crushed, dripped and spilt from the claw-like grip in which it held Eren and Armin.
Armin looked dazed, like he didn't even know what'd hit him, while Eren seemed to be barely coming back to reality. His teal-green eyes fluttered open, almost slowly flicking from Armin, to the hand holding him, and then his eyes drew over his shoulder, to the mouth of the bearded Titan.
A glyph spun to life under Weiss' feet.
The Titan tilted its head back, hoisting its hand above its open mouth.
Myrtenaster's Dust chamber spun and locked on Hard-Light Dust.
The Titan's hand opened, and out dropped Eren and Armin. Both started plummeting separately, Armin no longer holding onto Eren, and Eren still holding onto one of his swords.
But with his free hand, Eren then grabbed Armin, wrapping his hand around Armin's forearm.
Weiss' eyes briefly met Eren's now-glistening teal ones. His eyes were set in a glare. She stopped, the glyph under her feet flickering before fading away.
"CATCH!"
Eren spun, only once, before completely tossing Armin away from the Titan – and towards Weiss.
Weiss sprang from the dormer, Myrtenaster lowered by her side. As she held out her empty hand, Armin collided with her front, his arms flopping by Weiss' sides. The impact of their collision sent Weiss falling back toward the rooftop.
She recovered, though, as a glyph spun under her feet and she hopped backward, landing on the roof canopy. After she placed Armin on the tiles, to her left, her eyes flicked back toward Eren. She gave the top of Armin's head a gentle pat and stood. Taking off down the canopy before leaping from the eaves, Weiss stretched out her empty hand, reaching towards Eren.
Eren's eyes widened as she closed in, both of them now falling towards the Titan's mouth. However, his empty left hand reached out anyway, and soon he and Weiss grabbed one another's outstretched hands, Weiss keeping her grip iron-clad around his hand as her feet landed on the Titan's bearded chin. Briefly spinning her sword in her hand, she stabbed the blade through the Titan's lip, hoping it would help in keeping her balance steady. Eren sliced through the narrow slit in-between the front two upper teeth belonging to the Titan, the bottom of his sword grip facing Weiss, before he swung his remaining leg upward. His boot caught on the top of a tooth on the bottom row. Eren managed to slide his heel over the front of the tooth, digging the edge of the boot into the enamel.
And then, the Titan's teeth snapped shut.
Only Eren's hand and forearm remained in Weiss' hand. The rest of him... the Titan swallowed, down its throat. Eren's foot, still in the foot of his boot, flopped across the Titan's bottom lip, leaving a trail of blood as it slipped down the Titan's otherwise grey beard. Weiss' gaze followed it, as it plummeted, almost weightlessly, to the ground below, bouncing off the ball of the foot before finally toppling onto its side, laying as still as Weiss' thought process.
Well, shit.
If the Titans didn't kill her and Armin soon, Weiss could think of quite a few others that would want to finish the job for letting Eren get eaten.
"Weiss...?"
Armin's voice sounded breathless as he called her name. Shaky, too, as if he was about to cry.
Weiss slowly twisted in place, still managing to stand on the Titan's beard, keeping her grip tight on Myrtenaster. With hesitation that must've looked obvious to a boy like Armin, she held up Eren's severed arm. The hand was still gripping her own. She... didn't want to let go of it – to let it drop to the ground like Eren's foot had just done a moment ago. It would be too careless of her to do so, for someone she'd begun to care about the safety and the life of. "It ate him before I could pull him out. I'm sorry."
The tears in Armin's eyes swiftly flowed down his cheeks. His bottom lip wobbled, and both his expression and his kneeling form seemed to crumple.
She caught in her peripheral, then, the Titan's hand raising towards her.
As she made to move, a familiar black ribbon shot towards her, all the way from Weiss' left, and wrapped around Weiss' waist. A second ribbon immediately followed, wrapping around Armin's waist. As Weiss and Armin were both yanked away from the Titan, Weiss ripped Myrtenaster from the Titan's lip. She kept her grip iron-clad on Myrtenaster's hilt, as well as Eren's severed hand.
She figured she may as well take it with her, for now. She'd have to break the news of his death eventually, and seeing only his arm had been left might shut up just about anyone who tried holing themselves up in denial. It might be cruel of her to do, sure, but it's not like she'd be any more cruel than the monster that actually ate him... right?
Weiss landed on another rooftop, perhaps the same one from where they'd watched Thomas get his legs eaten off earlier, Weiss couldn't be sure. She was now stood beside Thomas, though, who happened to be being carried in the arms of a rather beat-up Mina.
Mina had become a mess of sorts. Spots of saliva in her hair and down her forehead, scrapes across her nose, chin, cheeks, and hands, with tears where her trousers covered her knees, and a bit of dirt across her thighs, boots, her front, and the sleeves of her jacket. Her nose looked as if it'd just been bleeding. A shallow but blunt cut ran horizontally between one cheekbone to the other, across where the bridge of her nose met the tip – the blood still looked somewhat fresh, dripping down both sides of her nose and mouth, and covering a majority of both cheeks, down to either side of her jawline.
According to her injuries, she'd nearly been eaten, and probably fallen at some point. Blake had likely saved her, since, upon scouring the area, Weiss found Nack and Milieus to also be missing, meaning they'd probably been killed, too.
"Is that...?" Blake asked, approaching Weiss' right. Her eyes stared down at the severed hand still clasped in Weiss' gloved one. Her irises trembled, not unlike Armin's had done earlier.
Weiss already knew what Blake was looking at. She simply nodded. She'd never felt so cold. "It's Eren's. He tried to save Armin and I couldn't rescue him in time."
From her peripheral, Weiss noticed Mina avoiding her gaze.
All that stress and recklessness to save him, and he still ended up dead.
"...I see," Blake's gaze momentarily fell to the tiles, before she met Weiss' eyes again. "Well, we shouldn't stay here. Perhaps we can get Ruby to come away from the Rear Guard so that she can clear the area, but I think it'll be best if I take Mina and Thomas back to HQ. Hopefully Squall can help me treat Mina's wounds, but since Thomas is still holding on, the least we can do is try to patch up what's left of his legs. You and Armin should go and look for any other squads, see if any of the other Cadets are still alive. They might've formed their own unit now that I'm pretty sure the plan's gone out the window."
Weiss nodded her affirmation. Her gaze trailed to her left, where Armin stood beside her, staring with blank eyes at the ground. His tears had stopped dripping, for the moment, but once she'd have to bring him back to reality, she didn't doubt that he would continue sobbing.
He really wasn't suited for battle. He'd be better off as a strategist, or in any position that would allow him to use his intelligence to come up with brilliant plans, not... not on a battlefield like this, where he could die a brutal death, and all of his potential could be wasted just like that, and just because some monster wants to kill him simply for the sake of killing him.
"Oh, and by the way," Blake piped up again, as she grabbed the severed arm, gingerly taking it out of Weiss' hold. "I'll hold onto this. I have a feeling Mikasa would at least want some part of him left, rather than having nothing at all."
Weiss could only hope Mikasa would be so understanding.
Blake Belladonna
The soles of Blake's boots landed where the rims of two short chimney pipes met.
Dark clouds had swarmed the sky, blocking out the sunlight and replacing the calm, disarming blue that'd only reminded Blake of how good everything had once been prior to the Colossal Titan's sudden appearance and the deaths of Eren and likely some of the other Cadets out on the field. At least, now, the weather seemed more appropriate for the situation, the lack of any bright sunshine causing the environment and scenery across Trost to become darker, and more dreary and depressing. As if the heavens themselves seemed to be about to let loose their own waterworks.
Ruby had once mentioned that to be her reason for disliking sudden, unexpected storms. Ones that weren't forecasted in the morning, despite still seeming significant enough to at least warrant a name. Storms that carried a harsh air in which Mother Nature's grief would feel all too real and palpable, and which had almost convinced Blake that the world could not be as cold and harsh and unforgiving as her experiences had led her to believe.
After all, according to Ruby and her mother, Summer Rose, to leave such a mark on the world that even the world itself grieved its loss of you, would be the greatest compliment one could achieve, wouldn't it?
And if that were the case, wouldn't the coldness and cruelty be more the fault of the beings which inhabiting the world, rather than the world itself? Or is the fact that those cold, cruel beings exist simply the nature of things, too?
But speaking of Ruby:
"Let me get this straight: you want me to leave the Rear Guard, just to go into a random part of town and kill a few Titans that you and Weiss couldn't handle on your own?"
With a wave of her right hand, in which she held the default, cleaver-like sword form of her Gambol Shroud, she directed Mina, who stood on the rooftop ridge, at the right of where Blake stood on the chimney, towards the building ahead of the one in front of their current one. Mina nodded, launching her wires at the building before she set off, propelled by her gas.
"It's not that we couldn't handle them," Blake finally answered, the small Scroll on her left wristband laying open and showing Ruby's caller ID photo. Meanwhile, her left palm pressed against the small of Thomas' back, as he laid over her left shoulder. She'd wrapped up what remained of Eren's arm in bandages and placed it inside her backpack earlier. "Our squad got too many casualties. Mina and Thomas came extremely close to dying, and even though Armin was pretty much unscathed, he's somehow gonna have to tell Mikasa that Eren died in an effort to try and save him."
"...Eren was one of your casualties?"
"As well as two other boys – Nack and Milieus. Thomas' legs are gone, Mina hasn't said a word since I saved her from getting eaten at the last second, and I'm pretty sure Weiss and Armin will mostly be stuck inside their own heads for a little while." Blake sprang from the chimney, onto the ridge of the rooftop ahead. Once landing, she hopped onto the ridge of the next rooftop, landing directly beside Mina. Her bow shifted a little as she listened for the sounds of any Titans nearby, and she hoped Thomas was too out of it to hear the ever-so-quiet ruffle of her bow's fabric. No Titans nearby, weirdly enough. Blake decided to count that as another blessing, while she pointed Gambol Shroud in the direction of the next two long buildings ahead of them, lining either side of the rather wide street in front of them. At the end of the street, another long building stood, perpendicular to the two rows, as it split the street in either direction. "Ruby? Are you still there?" She shot a glance at her Scroll.
"Oh—yeah, no, I'm here. I'll... I'll make my way there now. You did leave something behind so that I would know you've been there, right?"
"I left a stone statue and an ice statue." Blake chose to omit the fact that Ruby should find the statues standing back-to-back. She briefly watched Mina fire her wires at the end building and swing off their current rooftop, before deciding to follow Mina, hopping onto a the ridge of a dormer attached to the rooftop on the left side of the street. She sprang onto the next dormer several feet ahead, then the next, until several effortless leaps later, she landed on the ridge of the end building, standing next to Mina again. "If you find a Titan that looks like an old man with a grey beard, that's the one that ate Eren. Now, go raise hell."
"Already on it!"
Blake couldn't help but smile at the return of Ruby's cheerfully serious tone, as Ruby ended the call. After using her forefinger to press the button to close her Scroll, she looked toward HQ. They were only a few streets away, it looked, the tower sitting in the centre of a large ring of buildings. From Blake's position, the buildings up ahead of her and Mina appeared to either be getting a bit taller the closer they were situated to HQ, or had to be sitting on slightly higher ground, like a low, flat hill.
Blake figured the case to be more-so the former, rather than the latter, given this city had looked as if it'd been built on mostly-flat ground, though that'd been all the way back when she'd been on the top of Wall Rose and saw the scale of Trost District from above.
With a slight shake of her head, she ridded herself of those thoughts, and turned her attention back to Mina. "We're almost there. We should stay close to the towers, just in case any Titans try to take us by surprise." As her eyes darted to a tower standing a couple of rooftops away, over toward her left. It stood almost directly next to the tallest tower attached to the side of the HQ building, only separated by what appeared to be somewhere between a few and several metres of space, as well as a set of buildings, which stood almost hugging the sides of the smaller tower. "There. That tower. Think you've got enough gas to make it to the space at the top? And then fly through the HQ's windows?"
In response, Mina didn't speak, but instead met Blake's gaze again, and nodded. Her eyes seemed almost vacant of any emotion, as if she was acting absentmindedly, almost on autopilot but still maintaining some awareness of her situation and surroundings.
I might have to check later whether her ability to speak has been affected due to what she's experienced. It seems like she either doesn't want to talk, or knows that she can't – that is, if she actually has lost her voice like I suspect. "Well, I don't hear any Titans nearby, but we'll keep an eye on the streets and the gaps in-between the buildings anyway. At least two of the smaller ones have tried to take us by surprise today. We'll need to stay on high alert." That being said, I'm not sure if it could be too soon for that, or if perhaps Mina has a habit of going quiet when a situation turns south. If I want an answer, I could try getting her to speak when we're in the building.
Once more, Mina nodded wordlessly. Her wires burst forth, darting towards the smaller tower and piercing the stone, finding purchase just above a window situated in one of the walls of the top floor of the tower. Then, with a hiss from her emission, she launched forth from their current rooftop, leaving a thick, white stream of gas in her wake as it blasted her forward, toward the tower.
Blake soon followed, keeping Thomas steady on her shoulder, arm wrapped just tight enough around his midriff. She sprang from dormer to dormer, watching as Mina swung up toward the tower's large, long, glassless window with an arch-shaped top. Blake briefly landed atop a tall chimney pipe before springing high into the air. As pulled into a backflip, she shifted her grip on Gambol Shroud from its hilt to its attached ribbon, and with a jerk of her hand, she spun the blade rapidly. Then, with a swing of her arm, she cast the blade toward the roof of the tower. It lodged stiffly in the side of the dormer sat above the top-floor window. Gripping the ribbon, Blake swung towards the window.
Mina's grapple-hooks ripped from the wall. As her wires retracted back towards her, she dove feet-first through the window, a second or two ahead of a Titan leaping up from the ground below.
Just when I stopped focusing on listening out for them, one shows up, Blake briefly averted her eyes, before her attention snapped back to the Titan. It looked fairly small, no bigger than ten metres, for sure. Its shaggy, dull-blond hair swished back and forth as it started to fall from the air, back down to the street, in-between the buildings.
Blake took her chance. With both hands unavailable to use for a spell, she instead bounced from one of her shadows, swinging with an extra burst of momentum. As she closed in on the window, she tugged the ribbon and tore Gambol Shroud from the roof, and slipped into the open space in the window before the Titan could jump up again.
Her feet landed on light-coloured wood panel flooring, and she skidded to a halt just before an empty, polished wooden table sat in the centre of the room, the table surrounded by six polished wooden chairs adorned with slim, wine-red seats. A few feet directly behind the chair at the opposite end of the table, an identical window made up a good majority of the far wall. There were also two more identical glassless windows, one making up either side wall. In each corner of the room, two low, square bookshelves sat backed against each wall, with a slightly taller, square-topped and square-footed table settled in-between each pair of bookshelves, exactly in each corner. Meanwhile, two wooden ladders stood on each side of the room, with a ladder next to each side of either side-window, the ladders leading up to a wood platform a bit above the top edge of the windows, the platform acting as the room's ceiling, with a square hole surrounding the top of each ladder. Then, underneath either side-window, against either side wall, and behind each pair of ladders, laid a set of polished, dark wood steps leading down below the room, giving the room an entrance and exit to and from the room, and to and from the floor below.
Mina stood by the side-window over to Blake's right.
Gripping Gambol Shroud's hilt in her right hand, Blake approached the same window, moving in front of Mina to get a view of what was going on outside, albeit being mindful of the staircase under the window.
Maybe it was the bow's fabric blocking a bit of the sound she could be hearing better if her cat ears were out in the open, or simply the distance between her and HQ, but Blake managed to hear a few faint sets of harsh, heavy footfalls, sounding far enough away to likely be originating from around the far side of the HQ building. As she squinted, trying to train her eyes to see further ahead (which would go much better if she had Shaye's assumed Semblance), she barely made out at least one or two Titans roaming around the far right end of the building. They carelessly stomped around between the ring of houses and the main HQ building, their focus planted squarely on the building.
She couldn't see enough Titans to say HQ had been swarmed, and they weren't yet crawling all over the building, but the sight was worrying enough. Plus, there were still the smaller Titans to consider, too. What if they'd gotten into the supply room on the ground floor? They'd certainly have easy access, and would not only be small enough to avoid being seen past the buildings, but also would be small enough to fit through the entrance.
"I hope Squall got there alright and in one piece. If he's in there and we don't find him right away, I'll have to go looking for him." Using her Aura-sensing abilities to seek out Squall's Aura, even using Radiance Perception to locate his exact location within the building, would be a good idea; but if they didn't move now, those Titans would likely start moving towards the tower attached to the side of the main HQ building, and she figured neither her nor Mina wanted their route blocked – especially not now. She turned to Mina and stepped aside. "Remember. Stay high and look out for any enemies below. We can only see some of the taller ones from up here, but the smaller ones may be roaming around the sides of HQ. So let's get going, and hope they haven't got to the tower yet."
Mina silently nodded, again, and took off in a running-jump from the windowsill, firing her wires straight at the HQ tower. Her gas streamed behind her, following her as it blew her towards the the building.
Blake followed immediately after, hopping from the windowsill and onto the chimney-pipe of the building just below, landing softly. After a second, she pounced, high into the air, aimed at the row of rectangular, glass windows along the wall of the second-top floor of the tower. Shortly after watching Mina dive, feet-first, through the window in the centre, as her wires retracted back towards her, Blake followed her in, skidding to a halt on the dark wood flooring. Once standing directly beside Mina, Blake planted Gambol Shroud on her back, partially covering her backpack.
Bookcases lined the wall along the far side of the room, a couple of metres away and directly opposite the row of windows. Two bookcases ahead to her left had been separated to make space for a set of double doors. Meanwhile, several polished, dark wood desks sat between each window, a few feet from the wall, which each desk faced sidelong. A matching chair sat in its designated space beside each desk. Pairs of candles were stuck high along each wall, some attached to the wall in-between each window.
"Right. We're in," Blake sighed, more relieved the she'd expected herself to be. Grabbing a chair from one of the desks, she raced past Mina, toward the bookcases. "I can leave you in here to look after Thomas, right? I have some bandages in my backpack, so you can wrap up where his legs have been severed. I can barely feel him breathing, so it'd be wise if you washed and dressed them while I look for Squall. He should have a spell on-hand that might help heal your injuries," she spoke rather quickly, only now realising her heart was damn-near racing once they'd made it out of the thick of it. With somewhat shaky hands, she placed the chair down, its back set against a bookcase, and sat Thomas in the seat with as much care as possible. Once done, she looked at Mina over her shoulder, gaze expectant.
Mina blinked, brows raised, before her eyes drifted towards Thomas. Her gaze seemed to be a little more lively, now – a little more in the moment. "...Please find him quickly," she finally said, her voice quiet and a little bit raspy, perhaps from its brief disuse plus a bit of dehydration. Blake hadn't seen any of the Cadets carrying any water bottles or at least one of those canteen water bottles, and she hadn't seen any of the other soldiers much to know if they were carrying any water bottles.
Regardless, Blake couldn't help her relief that Mina had finally spoken. A heavy, relieved sigh left her lips: "Thank the Gods, your voice isn't lost. I was getting worried when you stopped talking for a while. Your throat sounds kind of dry though, I'm guessing you need some water?"
"That'd be nice." Mina shakily managed a small, polite smile. Her voice sounded a little lighter.
Twisting sidelong to face Mina, Blake took Gambol Shroud off her back and placed it flat on the floor as she crouched down, before slipping her backpack off her back. She planted it on the floor, over the other side of Gambol Shroud. She picked her sword back up. "Thankfully, I tend to exercise a bit of forethought. In here are some bottles of water, some bandages, and a few ointments to help cover up and heal the injuries you've got that are more than just a scratch, like the gash on your face. Oh, but before that—" Blake opened up the backpack and gingerly lifted out the bandage-wrapped severed arm that used to belong to Eren—"I should take this, it's a bit weird to keep it in there. Anyway, just use as much as you need."
Mina nodded, looking a bit more sure of herself now. "Okay!"
The tap-tap sounds of her footfalls echoed along the walls and stone flooring of the dreary-looking, candle-lit room. In the centre of the room, some sort of elevator or lift hovered, completely still, just above a square-shaped hole in the floor. It seemed to be hoisted up by some stiff rope that appeared to lead under the floor, likely to the floor below, where a lever probably sat that would be used to control the height of the lift.
"Hey, Squall! You in here?" Blake called out, though not too loud. She'd heard someone scuffling around in here only a moment ago – and upon exercising a bit of her sensory abilities, she'd found the presence of someone that seemed all too frightened and shaken-up to be Squall. Of course, there seemed to be a first time for a lot of things, but Squall being as terrified of man-eating monsters as whoever was trying to hide from her in here just didn't seem all that likely for Squall. He might be a lot of things, but when it came to situations like this, Squall had always shown, proved, all his bravery in battle, never acting like a flat-out coward wanting to run and hide from the fight.
Squall enjoyed fights – Ruby, Pyrrha, and Yang could easily vouch for that – and he thrived on the battlefield. Blake knew all too well that the midst of battle would be one of the very few occasions in which he'd feel so comfortable and free to be himself.
This presence was so far from that. Plus, this presence only came from a soul, not an Aura; nor a developed Aura, either. It had to be one of the soldiers. Perhaps one from the Garrison Regiment? Or a Cadet that didn't happen to be friends with Mikasa and Spring?
"I know you're there." Blake stopped beside the entrance of the lift. She folded her arms, her hands holding her elbows. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just come out. If you can't handle a couple of outsiders being here and trying to help you out, then how do you expect to survive the Titans that are trying to do the exact opposite and are trying to kill you?"
"And what would you know?!"
A familiar Captain jumped out from behind the corner of the lift. Swivelling, he swung his sword at Blake, his sunken eyes all too wide and betraying his frenzied state of mind.
She hopped backward, the sword slicing through one of her shadow clones. "The hell's your problem?! First you hide like a coward, then you pull a sneak attack on an ally who hasn't even drawn their weapon?!" She growled, shifting her feet shoulder-width apart. She clenched her fists at her sides, her stance becoming cautious and wary. She was prepared to either run or fight, and considering Captain Woermann now stood before her, in all his fearful, irrational glory, she'd be lying if she said she wasn't considering the latter, if only to knock some sense and (hopefully) bravery into him.
"Quiet, you damn outsider! How do I know you're an ally?! You and your damn friends brought the Colossal Titan here!"
Blake blinked, raising a brow. "How the hell did you get that idea?! We didn't even know what Titans were or how to kill them until we ended up here, and the Colossal had already showed up five years before we did today. You're not making any sense!" Her left hand opened, and she swung it in a sharp, sideways cutting motion.
He raised the tip of his sword, aiming it at her throat. "Stop talking like I'd trust anything you have to say!"
A familiar, 6-foot-tall silhouette rose to its full height behind Woermann, and from the shadows, an equally familiar gunblade swung towards him. The sword halted at Woermann's neck, the blade's edge barely grazing the skin of his throat.
"And you should stop talking like she answers to you."
Squall stepped out from behind Woermann, his gloved hands still holding his Revolver gunblade to Woermann's neck, his grip half-assed yet he held the blade sharply poised only a hair's breadth from where Woermann's beard stopped running down his neck. He appeared to lack the personalised case that she'd seen him carrying on his shoulder earlier, though the shadows of the room still partially covered him, inadvertently making him look all the more intimidating, so Blake couldn't exactly tell.
"Oh, Squall, there you are," Blake sighed, easing her stance. Her other fist fell open, and she aimed a more neutral expression at Squall. "I've been looking for you. I need your help with two Cadets I brought back."
Squall's muscles seemed to relax, if only slightly, as his eyes flicked to meet hers. "I'm guessing those Cadets are the reason you have blood all down your side?" His gaze trailed down her left side, from her abdomen and down her leg.
Blake's gaze followed his. The left side of her shirt, along with her left pant leg, each now bore a concerningly large smear of blood running down the front of them. A few small splodges of blood decorated the foot of her left boot, with a bit of a small splatter pattern running down the leg of the same boot. "Ah, hell. I think I must've been too busy carrying Thomas to notice his blood getting on my clothes." She looked back up at Squall. "Anyway, yeah, you're right. Thomas' legs got bitten off by a Titan that Eren called an Abnormal. He's barely hanging on in one of the other rooms, where Mina is treating him. I managed to save her from being eaten by another Titan, but she's also in rough shape. She's the less injured of the two, though, so I left her to treat Thomas' wounds in another room. She's likely still pretty shaken, for obvious reasons, but she looks like she's handling herself well enough for now. Still, do you think you could try and heal them as best you can? I figure you have a few potions stocked. Plus, Star has been teaching you that Cura spell, so you can cast it without drawing it first."
"Is... that all?" Squall blinked, lowering his gunblade a little. He stepped out from the shadows. As he moved to stand almost in front of Captain Woermann, a little off to one side, near Woermann's sword (which had started trembling in his hold), Blake noticed that he was indeed no longer carrying his mostly-matte-black case. "You don't plan on asking me about how my call with Shaye went?"
"You can tell me whether you had any luck contacting her with your Scroll while we're on our way back to Thomas and Mina." With a quirk of her thumb, she gestured over her shoulder, thumb aimed at the square, empty entrance, which lacked any sort of door. "Besides, I don't think I've given you an explanation on how to go after the Titans yet."
Squall shrugged and lowered his gunblade, pulling it away from Woermann. Twirling Revolver in his hand, he settled the sword across his shoulder, the blade sitting on the fur collar of his cropped, fitted black jacket and hovering behind his head. "Alright, sure. Whatever. By the way," Squall started, aiming a pointed glance at Captain Woermann over his shoulder, "what about this guy?"
Blake spared a deadpan glare at Woermann. She folded her arms. "Forget him, for now. He's just a coward that shouldn't be a Captain. Too paranoid and hysterical to think anything through and consider logic. I know how terrifying and overwhelming this situation is, but I'd expect this kind of behaviour from some of the Cadets, not a Captain from the exact regiment that's supposed to act the main defence for the outer wall. We shouldn't agitate him any more. If he's enough of a coward that he's gonna use his position to desert his post, then we'll let him, and on his own head be it."
Yang Xiao Long
The slim, clear-bladed falchion swords she'd taken from the White Fang lackeys a few hours ago had been proving so useful so far. As she raked them through another Titan's nape, she'd never felt smarter for listening to her gut, and it showed on her face, in the gleam of pride shining in her eyes, and the way her lips had curled into a grin. She stomped her foot near the side of the Titan's neck, before she fired a dual-burst from Ember Celica, aimed down behind her, and she launched forward.
The ball of her foot hit the ridge of the rooftop, which the Titan had been trying to crawl over. Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she caught a glimpse of the Titan's body collapsing across the width of the rooftop, its corpse soon laying limp over the tiles. She faced the front again.
At the building in front of her, a smaller Titan, between five and ten metres, was climbing, slowly, up the corner between the building's front and side walls, the latter wall facing Yang. The Titan hung from the corner, ahead to her left, its limbs practically hugging the walls. Yang aimed Ember Celica behind her, grip tightening on the grip of each sword.
Athena barrelled past her. As Yang paused, she watched Athena's giant left hand grab the Titan by its scalp, yanking it off the building. In the same, swift movement, she pulled the Titan high up, her other hand grabbing its leg, and opened her mouth. Her teeth tore into the Titan's weak spot with an audible crunch and squelch.
After a second—no, wait, a third sickening crunch, Athena pulled back, teeth ripping away all the flesh she'd chomped down on. She dropped the Titan on the ground, on its front. It fractured the concrete on impact. Then, Athena opened her mouth, letting all the skin and flesh she'd gathered fall out, the dead Titan's blood following as it dripped from her teeth and tongue. The pieces of skin and flesh landed, somehow not too wet, on the dead Titan's back.
"Now that was just gross," Yang muttered with a grimace. She averted her gaze, focusing on the street to her right.
On the building diagonally ahead of Yang's, on other side of the street, Weiss landed atop one of the building's two tall chimney pipes. Armin was sitting on her back, his legs tightly wrapped around Weiss' waist and his arms laid securely over Weiss' shoulders and around her collar. His head hovered over Weiss' right shoulder. Blake and Eren, as well as Mina and Thomas, didn't appear to be with them.
Yang raised her sword in the air and waved. Flames briefly flickered around her form, her Aura flaring a little in order to get Weiss' attention. Weiss' attention snapped towards Yang in an instant, and Armin soon followed. Weiss was probably looking for one of us, then. "Hey, Weiss! Come on, over here!"
From Yang's peripheral, she noticed Spring land a few feet ahead of her, to her left. Spring's gaze flicked towards Weiss and Armin. "That does not look good. Weren't they with Squad Thirty-Four, the same squad Eren's supposed to be part of?"
"Yeah. Blake was with them, too." Yang lowered her arm. She watched Weiss leap high over the street, bouncing from one glyph, then a second, strangely without any flashy acrobatics – probably due to her carrying Armin. Weiss landed ahead of Yang, to Yang's right, her landing just gentle enough to avoid jolting Armin too much. "I thought you were with Blake," Yang started, as she tilted her head. "What happened? Where's everyone else from your squad?"
"Nack and Milieus are dead," Weiss began, tone as cold as the look in her eyes. "Thomas lost his legs. Blake just barely managed to save Mina from being eaten, and I somehow couldn't do the same thing for Eren despite the fact that I wanted and should've been able to."
"And that means... he's also dead?" Yang cautiously asked, just to make sure.
Weiss gave a half-hearted shrug. "I think so. I saw him get eaten."
"Weiss told me she can still sense Eren's soul," Armin began to explain, his voice clear, but his tone uncertain. "Neither of us are sure how or why."
Light, almost-stomps followed Athena to their shared rooftop. Her giant hands softly held the eaves, as she tilted her head, the previous Titan's blood already having evaporated, leaving her mouth somewhat clean again. "In what condition was he eaten? Or, uh—which... no, wait—did he lose any body parts?"
"Are you alright, Athena?" Spring twisted halfway round to look at Athena.
"Do not worry, I am alright. I was just having trouble phrasing what I wanted to say." Athena momentarily closed her eyes, before opening them again to meet Weiss' gaze. "Titans do not generally try to eat a person whole, though they will if they have no other choice. I also do not believe they chew, as I have only ever seen them swallow after biting."
"Lovely," Weiss deadpanned, tone dripping with sarcasm.
"My point being, Titans will normally try to aim for the spinal column, or the brain, or even both. That is why they will often sever the body somewhere along the torso and back, as well as the head and neck. So, if none of those areas were severed when your friend was eaten, then there is a chance that he would still be alive, just in the stomach of the Titan that ate him."
Armin blinked before his eyes grew wide. A bright, brilliant light seemed to return to the ocean blue of his irises, like a lightbulb had just switched on inside his brain. Yang swore she could almost see the gears starting to turn in his mind. "We need to go back there. If that Titan hasn't already left the area, then we could break Eren out of its stomach and save him!"
"Sounds like a plan, I guess." Yang looked over at Spring. "Can you tell Christa, Ymir, and Connie that they're coming with us to save Eren? We'll explain the situation on the way. I'd just like us to stick together as a squad, in case things start going wrong."
Spring gave a clear nod. Her Aura flared with what Yang sensed as newfound confidence and vitality, before she spun on her heels, leaping all the way over to another rooftop. "Already on it!"
Ruby Rose
Ruby lifted her head, looking up toward the sky. The eerie shift in weather had dulled whatever vibrancy there had been making up their surroundings, and even Ruby found that she'd become more dull in her appearance, as the dark clouds looming in the sky overshadowed her form.
Shaking her head, she set her gaze onward, another shot from Crescent Rose's rifle form launching her forward.
Past a building to her right, Ruby caught sight of the statues that Blake said she'd left. The stone and ice statues each stood, back-to-back, atop a short chimney pipe respectively, both statues showcasing Blake standing relatively normally, holding Gambol Shroud in one hand as her arms hung by her sides.
Ruby aimed Crescent Rose at the building to her left, though aimed a bit low, and fired. She shot up toward the rooftop directly to her right, somersaulting over where the statues stood, before she landed smoothly on the rooftop ridge.
A grey-bearded Titan stood at the right of the building. It's face turned towards Ruby.
So, this must be the Titan that ate Eren.
Crescent Rose opened up into its scythe form. She raised it to shoulder-level, pointing the jagged blade attached to the end of the staff at the Titan, while the muzzle was aimed behind her.
He'd wanted to wipe the Titans out and send them back to hell. So, if he happened to be no longer here to do it, then Ruby would gladly do it in his place. It was only right, since he'd helped her so much when she dropped into this world. She could at least return the favour, even if he wouldn't be around to see her do so.
She took one, just one, step forward across the roof ridge, before the Titan's head snapped back. A giant, open hand burst from within its throat and out of its mouth, pushing high enough for an entire forearm to follow out and reveal itself. Blood spewed from the bearded Titan's mouth, along with a blast of steam. The Titan's teeth wrapped around what appeared to be the elbow.
The bearded Titan stumbled. As the hand and arm drew back into its throat, the Titan's balance faltered. It then tripped, toppling over and falling towards its left-hand side, before landing flat on its front.
Ruby blinked, her eyebrows knitting together. She followed the roof ridge to the side of the building and peered down.
The hell—?
The skin along the Titan's back began to rise, large lumps and mounds of flesh moving rapidly under the surface. Cracking and clicking could be heard from within, as if a body was being assembled together under the skin, inside the bearded Titan's back. The Titan's body convulsed.
Then, once the mounds seemed to collect together under the skin, the Titan's back soon burst open. A blast of steam ripped through the skin, high into the air.
The Titan stopped, flopping limply on the ground.
Ruby raised an arm to shield her face as blood sprayed out in all directions, scattering and splashing across the walls of the surrounding buildings.
And from the deep, gaping hole in the bearded Titan's back, another, newly-formed Titan rose, soon standing at his full height of 15 metres. He stood sidelong, facing down the street leading past Ruby's right-hand side.
Streams of blood slithered down his dark, rugged, somewhat unkempt hair, before the blood soon evaporated, fading into steam. From what she could see of his face, his eyes looked a little sunken, and seemed to be the same teal-green colour that Eren's had been. His unusual, jagged mouth lacked lips, nor bore skin that would've covered the majority of either cheek, thus allowing his back teeth to be exposed. His dark-brown hair looked just about long enough to graze his shoulders, otherwise reaching at least his nape, while his ears happened to be elongated and somewhat sharply-shaped. And, in terms of his body type, he appeared well-proportioned and physically fit, seeming more defined, lean, and muscular in his appearance, sporting what seemed to be a six or eight-pack, as well as some decent muscle making up his legs and arms.
The rest of the Titans she'd seen so far had been either emaciated or pot-bellied, and happened to have faces that looked relatively normal, or as if they could've been just another person she'd see in town, had they not been... well, Titans that kill people.
He opened his mouth, just a little, and immediately steam vented out from between his back teeth. Then, he threw his head back and howled, his mouth wide open, and his elongated, sharp tongue sticking out.
A shiver travelled through Ruby, her muscles growing tense.
His howl sounded almost like a roar, as well as some sort of cry or scream. A battlecry, maybe? Well, whatever noise he'd just let out, Ruby couldn't help but think he sounded like Eren: like he was screeching as loud as he could to let the world know he wasn't dead – not yet, at least. To let the world know he still remained in it, all too alive and ready to start kicking.
And by the fucking Gods, could Ruby feel it – his unwavering soul, within that Titan, burning as brightly as the rage behind his eyes. And she knew it had to be Eren's and his alone; she recognised it all too well as the same soul she'd allowed herself to sense, to feel, to make herself aware of only some time before this, back on Wall Rose, when they'd hung on the wall side-by-side, and when they'd taken on the Colossal Titan together with the rest of her team.
But she didn't understand. Yes, Gods yes, was she glad to sense Eren's soul coming from that Titan, since it could only mean he hadn't died after all. But even so, how would he have come back as a Titan, of all things? And why?
The Titan's howl soon died down, becoming a low, guttural growl upon closing his mouth, before he finally went quiet. Then, he turned towards her, with barely a jerk of his head, as his eyes met hers.
She knew those eyes.
"Eren...?" She asked, unable to stop herself from smiling.
He huffed, almost... softly?
And then he turned away, facing down the end of the street again.
She followed his gaze.
A small Titan, barely 5 metres – maybe less, since she couldn't really tell with the Titan apparently crawling towards them, its body set in perhaps a crouched position – was approaching the... Eren Titan. That'd have to be his name for the moment, until she figured out something different. Either way, the smaller Titan seemed to be more focused on the Eren Titan, rather than Ruby.
She'd think its lack of attention to seemingly the only human here would be strange; she would. However, she'd also be pretty sure that the Eren Titan rising from the corpse of another Titan had to be weirder. Hell, she didn't even know whether that was really a thing in this world, or if it might just be unique to the Eren Titan.
The Eren Titan stepped forth, towards the smaller Titan, stomping on the weak-spot of the bearded Titan he'd risen from the corpse of, a sickening crunch following its neck being crushed under the weight of the Eren Titan's foot. The Eren Titan proceeded onward though, seemingly undeterred as he advanced toward the small Titan. He didn't get far before he and the smaller Titan soon stopped, almost simultaneously, only a few metres away from each other.
The small Titan sprang from the ground. Its mouth hung wide open, as if aiming to try and attack Eren. But Eren pulled his arm back, only to throw out an underarm swing. His fist slipped past the Titan's teeth, slamming into the back of its mouth.
Yep. Sure. This oughta be normal. Completely normal.
The small Titan plummeted, hitting the ground with a crack. Steam began to rise from the inside of its jaw.
Steam also began to rise from—oh, Eren's fist and wrist were missing. His arm looked like it'd been sliced off from the mid-forearm down. Despite his injury, he barely spared a glance at his arm, before he lifted his foot. He stomped down on the Titan's weak-spot – once, twice, three times—okay, four times now.
And he stopped, hopefully satisfied with his victory.
Ruby blinked. "So, uh... you're a strange one, huh?" she asked, not really sure what else to say.
It had to be a strange occurrence for a Titan to rampage against their own kind. If it were normal, the other soldiers wouldn't have been treating that girl Titan like it was unheard of for a Titan to rebel against other Titans. If they knew that Titans could turn against their own kind, would the cadets still be so afraid, and the soldiers so on edge, and the death toll just as high? She didn't know. She'd only been in this world for an hour, maybe two. She didn't know whether the Eren Titan happened to be a new, unique breed of Titan, like the soldiers seemed to believe to be the case for the Colossal and Armoured Titans, or something had happened to Eren inside that dead, bearded Titan's stomach and he'd somehow turned into a regular Titan, but one that simply happened to have more control over his actions, just like she'd seen of the girl Titan currently rebelling against the Titans too.
The Eren Titan spared a side-glance at her.
"I'm guessing you can't talk, can you?" She cocked her head to one side. He didn't respond. Instead, he just stood there, staring at her. A pair of third eyelids blinked, thin as they briefly slid from the inner corners of his eyes, across the surface of each eye and back to the inner corners. They were called... nictitating membranes, as far as Ruby remembered. A third eyelid possessed by predatory species. Blake had often told of a few Faunus she'd met in the White Fang who had that trait, and how she often saw that trait as rather an interesting one to have as a Faunus, and one that even she, as a Faunus herself, hadn't noticed until roughly five years ago. Ruby made a mental note to tell Blake about the Eren Titan's trait later. "Well, you have to be Eren, since you have his soul. But you're not exactly responsive. Maybe you're not in full control, I guess?"
He tilted his head, before looking away. Almost as if he... wasn't sure how to respond? His reactions were starting to remind her a lot of Squall and his habits – habits he displayed during a personal conversation, most of the time, or simply any conversation he didn't want to be part of.
His hand was beginning to heal, the bones of his wrist materialising, followed by the flesh.
Ruby jumped from the roof and onto his shoulder. Upon landing, she crouched on one knee close to his neck, her balance stable. "Alright, let's do it this way," she told him with a smile. "You're taking on the Titans, right?" And with that, his eyes immediately flicked to meet hers again. "I'll help you take them out. If you are Eren, like I think you are, then you should remember that I told you I'd help you fight them."
His normal eyelids blinked this time. Then he offered a curt nod of his head. The last bit of skin materialised, stitching itself back together at the tips of his fingers.
Ruby mouth fell open, and broadened into a wide smile. "Good! But before that, I told Mikasa I'd go back to join her at the Rear Guard. We're gonna need to go there first. And I'm saying 'we' because I am so not leaving you here to fend for yourself! Nod if you understand."
He nodded, again, more clearly this time. Then, he blinked again, as his nose wrinkled and he sniffed the air. He swivelled in place, turning in a full 180. One of Ruby's hands moved from Crescent Rose's staff and gripped his hair, keeping a tight grip on the strands as she watched him raise his hands before him, fists tightly clenched.
Ruby blinked, raising a brow. Wait, isn't that a stance for hand-to-hand combat?
A few metres ahead of Ruby and Eren, a potbellied Titan was strolling towards them. Ruby noted that, considering the speed of his stroll, the potbellied one had to be an Abnormal. Its almost emaciated arms swung by either side of its body, fingers loosely bent toward the palms, all the while forming a disproportionate appearance.
And again, much like the previous, now-dead small Titan moments ago, the eyes of the potbellied Abnormal laid trained on Eren. Almost as if it didn't even see her on Eren's shoulder.
A deep, guttural-sounding roar erupted from Eren. If Ruby could understand what he might've been trying to say there, he probably would've been saying something along the lines of 'Come at me, you bastard!'. Something that she might imagine Izuku's friend Kacchan yelling, given what Izuku had once told her and Ichigo about his childhood friend.
In response, the Abnormal Titan released an almost-as-loud, equally-guttural, somewhat high-pitched screech. It sounded annoying, to say the least. And now, it was heading towards them, its pace faster and its stomping footfalls more rapid.
"I think I'll let you handle this," Ruby told him. After Crescent Rose retracted and closed into rifle mode, she hopped up onto Eren's head, her left hand grabbing thick brown locks as she settled into a kneeling position atop the crown of his head. Her right forefinger wrapped around Crescent Rose's trigger.
With another, quieter roar from the back of his throat, Eren pulled his right fist back, and swung. His knuckles barrelled into the Abnormal's cheek, a crack following a number of the Titan's teeth dropping from its swiftly-shattering jaw, as it was knocked off its feet. Bowling over, the Titan soon landed on its back, skidding across the ground before stopping a few feet away. It lay sprawled out in the middle of the street, steam rising from its lopsided jaw as its mouth was starting to heal.
As the Titan appeared to move its hands, perhaps in hopes of getting up, Eren took off in a dash toward it. His rapid, harsh footfalls cracked the ground, leaving foot-sized craters with every step, and he hopped. His heels slammed into the Titan's throat, crushing its neck as he landed. The impact tore its head from rest of its body. As the head rolled away, littering the ground with splatters of blood, Eren began pummelling the Titan's neck further, stomping one foot down after the other, until he seemed sure that it had to be somehow more than overkill. He stopped and stepped off the Titan's corpse.
"You've got more of a bone to pick with the Titans than I realised, buddy," Ruby noted, as she watched the splatters of blood evaporate. A sigh slipped past her lips, as her gaze trailed toward the headless and decaying Titan. Eren aimed a forefinger down at it, as if proud of killing it. "So, your only purpose is killing the Titans. And I'm guessing you're doing it on instinct?" she asked, just to make sure. She shifted her position, gripping the hair as she pushed herself off the crown of Eren's head, deciding to hoist herself up next to Eren's right temple. She curled two large, thick strands around her hand, balling them up in her hand and gripping them tightly in her fist, her hold stable and secure, and apparently not hurting him. She planted the sole of her left foot next to his eye, her other foot hanging just next to his cheek.
He dropped his hand, appearing to consider her words. Then, he looked towards her, and offered a simple shrug, confident but like he didn't really know or care. Ruby swore she noticed a glint of excitement in his eyes, though, and so, in turn, she grinned back at him.
"Let's head to the Rear Guard, then."
"Okay, this is the place. I see the gate up ahead." Ruby tapped her right foot on Eren's cheekbone twice. "You should stop here. I don't want any of the other soldiers thinking you're just another Titan if they see you. The squad occupying this area is filled with elite soldiers, who I'd think would not hesitate to kill you as soon as they see you." Releasing her handful of his hair, her feet dropped onto his shoulder. She hopped onto the square-shaped, stone rim of the short, brick chimney attached to the building just ahead and to the right of where Eren was standing. She looked up at him over her shoulder. "If they're worth their salt as soldiers, anyway. Besides, I don't think it'd be a good idea for you to show up and scare the hell out of the civilians, either."
A low, gruff, snarl-like sound rippled out quietly from the back of his throat. Definitely a little pissed with the situation, though that was probably putting it lightly.
"Look, I know you don't like it," Ruby huffed at him, swivelling in place to stare at him. One of her hands held the smooth, matte-black handle grip of Crescent Rose's rifle form, while the other gripped the red bolt handle. She held Crescent Rose low, in front of her lap, the red recoil pad attached to the end of the black grip pressing against the front of her left hip. "Trust me, I wouldn't like it either if I were in your shoes. But I'll try not to take too long getting back, so we can get going to another area with more Titans as soon as possible. If any Titans come after you here, then... try not to cause too much of a ruckus when you kill them. And try not to let them get the drop on you!"
He responded with a dull, bored grumble this time – probably the Eren Titan equivalent of Squall's iconic 'Whatever' catchphrase. His turned away, to his left, his gaze wandering to other streets and buildings.
"Alright. See you later, Eren," she said, offering him a gentle smile, before spinning in a full 180 to face the inner gate, almost hidden behind several buildings lined up diagonally ahead of her, to her right. Even from here, though, the gate appeared to still be hoisted up. Apparently the civilians of Trost still hadn't been evacuated yet. "Hold on. The hell's taking everyone so long to get out of the city?" She spared an over-the-shoulder glance at Eren again. "You'd think the civilians would show a little urgency, given their situation." Eren simply blinked, almost curiously, at her. Her attention returned to the gate. "I'll have to take a rain check on checking back in with the Rear Guard squad. I'm gonna go see what's holding the civilians up."
Ruby landed on the ridge of a rooftop a few buildings away from the open gate.
Jammed inside the open archway, a wide, somewhat long wagon sat, carrying a large, white package spanning the entire size of the wagon platform. The package laid wrapped in a few ropes, pulled taut and pressing into the white coverage of the package, which looked filled to the brim with whatever was being carried inside it. And in front of the gate, surrounding the wagon, the rest of the civilians stood, a lot of them shouting at the short, pudgy businessman standing directly in front of the end of the wagon.
"What the hell is wrong with you people?!" One man yelled from the relatively far side of the somewhat crescent-shaped crowd. "I don't think you fully appreciate how bad the situation is!"
The businessman whirled to face them, then, throwing his open hand out. Two other men stood at his sides, their fists clenched, as they looked ready to fight whoever came close. "Oh, I appreciate it just fine, believe me!" The crown of his head looked bald, though he bore dark hair around the back of his head instead. He also had a bit of a scraggly-looking moustache and beard, and wore a dark suit. "If you wanna make it outta here alive, stop whining and help!"
So, he's putting his cargo before the lives of every other civilian that we're fighting and sacrificing ourselves to save. What a selfish bastard.
Ruby hopped from the rooftop, landing gently a few feet away from the back of the crowd. As she rose to stand, she hoisted Crescent Rose onto her right shoulder, its rifle barrel laying over a part of the rim of her jacket's hood, and its muzzle behind her head, aimed upward, facing the direction of another building to her left. A habit she'd adopted from Squall, without a doubt, but she'd always thought it made her look at least a little badass whenever she did it, so she didn't mind. She'd be lying if she said she didn't think Squall was just that cool.
Anyway:
"Hey! Seriously?!"
The noise of the crowd soon died down, as everyone turned to look at her over their shoulders. Several people, directly in front of her, all stepped aside, shrinking and shuffling further into either side of the crowd, opening up a path through the crowd before her, wide enough for two or three people. The path through the crowd gave her a clearer, more direct view of the businessman, now, though he still didn't look any more impressive than he had before.
She tilted her head at him, making sure he saw her incredulous expression. "Seriously? Do you realise that you're the reason why the evacuation process is taking too long?"
"Yeah, well, if you and these other worthless idiots could actually help in pushing my wagon, maybe we could all get through a little bit faster!" He flung both his arms out wide, as if it would illustrate his point better.
Ruby wasn't buying that bullshit for a second. "Yeah, right!" She shot him an obvious look of disgust, her snarling grimace clear and aimed at him. "Your wagon looks like it's jammed in the gate! Even if we all helped out, it'd only get even more stuck in there!"
A brief quake rippled under Ruby's feet. Then another. And soon another two quakes, quicker this time, shook the ground.
Ruby swivelled in place. She pulled Crescent Rose off her shoulder, aiming the muzzle down.
More quakes followed, increasingly rapid in pace, and nearing the street. From the right-hand-side of the end building.
A tall, potbellied Titan rounded the street corner, in a whacky, erratic sprint, throwing each foot back and outward. Its head, decorated with an expression Ruby could only describe as ecstatic, flew side to side, its body and bent-out arms wobbling - a result of its strange sprint.
An Abnormal!
Trembles rippled through the ground, under her feet. The people in the crowd started yelling, shouting, screeching, panicking as they bolted towards the wagon. A few adults held their children close, while others began frantically trying to climb up the back of the wagon.
Ruby sprinted the opposite direction, pounding the pavement towards the Abnormal.
The Titan's legs were moving too erratically. She could get a good slice in, but she'd be risking getting punted by its speed and wild gait. That being said, there would be a good chance Mikasa had to be nearby, if not already tailing the Abnormal, just like the other soldiers Ruby could hear yelling behind it. Ruby would have a better chance of simply finding some way to stop the Abnormal in its tracks, and let someone else kill it.
She stuck Crescent Rose, still in its rifle form, to the magnetic strip on the back of her belt.
Red rose petals fluttered behind her, and she launched from the ground, twirling into a swirling crimson blur. A blast of force, of wind, followed in her wake toward the Abnormal, and the air began to whirl around the blur. She darted forth, soon unwrapping herself from the blur.
Her palms slammed against the Titan's potbelly.
The Titan stopped. A wave of force, of air pressure, burst outward around her. At either side of her, the windows of a few buildings shattered.
The Titan's legs wobbled as its feet hit the ground. Its narrow eyes peered down at Ruby. Then, the Titan's left hand started to rise towards Ruby, with its fingers bent like claws.
Behind the Titan came the zip of a wire, followed by the sound of skin being punctured, coming from the back of the neck – likely a grapple-hook piercing the nape. A blasting hiss of gas seemed to approach, swift and clean, and then, what sounded like a slice or two at the nape, accompanied by a click coming from two swords, and a slick tear through skin. Then, finally, the stretch and squeak of leather boots.
The Abnormal's hand fell. The rest of its body tilted forward, wobbling forward, and Ruby angled her hands, spring towards her right, before flying off the Titan. Ruby twirled and landed facing it, and watched it barrel face-first into the ground, dead. Its head crashed only several feet from the crowd of civilians, who'd finally stopped panicking, with Ruby only a few feet away from its temple.
Mikasa landed smoothly on the back of the Titan's head. Almost immediately, she lifted one of her blades up level with her face, inspecting its edge. With a bored, or perhaps more-so nonchalant expression, she seemed to notice that the blade had dulled. Then she glanced at Ruby from the corner of her eye, before doing a double-take, blinking as her gaze landed back on Ruby. The blades Spring had given her still laid stuck to the square of Mikasa's back. "Oh, you're already back. I take it you cleared out the area Blake sent you to?"
"Yeah, though I had some help. I came back here just before you showed up, and found..." Ruby offered an open handed wave, gesturing to the businessman, as well as the crowd that'd already backed off his wagon. "...Well, whatever we're seeing here."
Mikasa followed her gaze. Ruby barely caught the slight hitch of Mikasa's breath, before Mikasa called out: "Excuse me, what is all this?"
"Couldn't have asked for better timing!" The businessman completely ignored Mikasa's question. Somehow, his voice sounded even more guttural and strident than it had before, and he raised his fist, punching the air. "Force these useless morons to push my wagon! I'll pay you handsomely!"
Ruby stepped around the dead Titan's head. She stopped directly between the head and the crowd, and stood sidelong, her head turned toward Mikasa. "See? He was into getting me to help him push his wagon along with the other civilians. Except, I'm pretty sure that wagon's jammed in there. Pushing it's not gonna do work."
Mikasa's widened eyes flicked from Ruby to the businessman. She pointed one of her swords behind her, her jaw agape, as she stared at him. "Seriously? Soldiers are dying back there; laying down their lives for you. All because this is taking too long."
"Yeah, that's their job! You expect me to shed a tear 'cause they've gotta fulfil the duties they signed on for?!" He shouted back. "They're supposed to be willing to lay down their lives! Don't get all high-ended on me just 'cause you finally gotta earn your damn keep after all these years!"
Mikasa pressed her lips shut. Her eyes quickly dulled and narrowed. Ruby shot a glare at him from the corner of her eye, and scowled, pulling Crescent Rose from the magnetic strip on her belt.
As Ruby rested Crescent Rose's rifle barrel on her shoulder, Mikasa hopped from the Titan's rapidly decaying head. Despite Mikasa's blades being dulled, she advanced forward alongside Ruby. The crowd split, making a pathway for the two girls.
"Yeah. No arguing with that. You're absolutely right, sir," Mikasa told him, her gaze set in a hard stare, and her expression nonchalant and apathetic. "Guess it's what you call the greater good. Still, sometimes it's not the life or the death of the soldier that makes the biggest difference."
Two men (or more accurately, the bodyguards he paid to protect him) stepped in front of the businessman, their fists raised. He, too, raised his fist in defiance. "Don't you even dare. Your Commander and I are old friends! One word from me and both of you will be court-martialled!"
The bodyguards charged at the girls.
Mikasa and Ruby shared a deadpan, knowing glance, their eyes meeting with a silent, unspoken understanding and agreement. Ruby paused and stepped back, while Mikasa powered ahead of her, raising her dulled Titan-killing blades. She swung the dulled edges down on the shoulder blades of each bodyguard, effortlessly shoving the men aside, and sending them careening down onto the ground. Even then, Mikasa only continued advancing, and Ruby followed, catching up to stand side-by-side with Mikasa.
They both stopped directly in front of the businessman.
Mikasa glared down at him, being quite a bit taller than either him or Ruby. "Will that word be coming from beyond the grave?"
He stumbled backward, his open hands fumbling as he raised them, when they aimed their weapons at him. Crescent Rose's muzzle and the tip of Mikasa's blade both pointed at his face. And they stayed like that, unmoving, while a bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
"Sir, maybe we should..." another, taller man started, leaning over towards the businessman.
He lowered his head. His gritted his teeth, glaring at either girl. "Pull the damn wagon out."
And so, the men still standing beside the wagon eventually managed to haul it back out of the archway, rolling it next to the gate. Ruby and Mikasa watched them do so from the sidelines.
As the civilians finally began flooding through the gate, Ruby let slip a sigh of relief, her shoulders falling and some of the tension draining from her muscles. From her peripheral, she caught Mikasa's eyes flick towards her.
"You surprised me. I didn't think someone like you would be prepared to pull off such threats."
Ruby blinked. She looked at Mikasa, then, before she shrugged, a sheepish smile worming its way onto her face. "That's probably because I wasn't prepared. I wasn't really thinking about actually doing anything, either, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't angry and a bit tired of his selfishness. I don't think I would've pulled the trigger. Still, none of these guys have to know that."
Mikasa aimed a small ghost of a smile at Ruby. "I see." That smile disappeared as quickly as it'd shown up. "Is it a custom on Remnant to not want to attack someone who doesn't have a weapon on them?"
"I wouldn't exactly call it a custom, but you're bound to find some people in the different countries and kingdoms around the world that do abide by that rule, I guess you could call it, as part of a kind of moral code. That being said, I don't think you'd expect that kind of..." Ruby's head lulled to either side as she considered the right word. "...mercy, or something like that, from anyone that lives outside the kingdoms. They're sort of like beacons of peace and safety – the kingdoms, I mean."
"And I'm guessing that the lands outside the kingdoms are somewhat lawless?" Mikasa blinked, adding a slight tilt of her head.
"As far as I've heard. If you're curious about it, though, you'd be better off asking Blake. She was raised outside the kingdoms. According to her, if you can't fight, you can't survive, at least out there. I believe the same, but that's just how I was trained."
Mikasa nodded, looking forward. "I believe you're both right."
Just then, a cheery, high-pitched, child-like voice called out to them: "You're amazing!"
Ruby and Mikasa both blinked. A few feet ahead of them, a little girl stood in front of her mother, gazing up at Ruby and Mikasa, with a wide, open smile on her face. Her mother's hands rested gently on her shoulders.
Ruby's chest seemed to tighten, as a brief glimpse of her younger self with her own mother took the place of the mother and daughter before them. However, as swift as it appeared, that brief glimpse soon cleared itself up, and she recovered by doing what what she always did: repress the sadness and the emptiness that came with remembering how much she missed her mother. Her chest still remained tight, though. She'd have to wait until she got back to the Eren Titan, since hopefully he'd be able to distract her from her grief.
"You've saved our lives," the mother told them, a softened look gracing her features. She bowed her head. "All of us are in your debt."
It took both girls a moment to respond, but Mikasa soon offered a smile and demonstrated their military salute, holding one arm behind her back and her opposite fist over her heart. Sticking Crescent Rose's rifle form to the back of her belt, Ruby followed Mikasa's lead, giving the girl a cheerful smile while she performed the military salute as well, holding her right fist over her heart.
The girl's jaw dropped open, but her smile still remained.
Both girls let their salutes fall, before twirling on their heels, and heading back towards the end of the street.
Weiss Schnee
"Oh! Athena, you can stop here. I can see the statues that Blake left behind." Weiss gestured with an open hand toward the rooftop just ahead, directly to the group's left, the chimney of which happened to be propping up Blake's stone and ice statues.
Athena stopped beside the slim gap in-between the two buildings to their left, just before the rooftop on which the statues stood. Her eyes darted across the area, as if searching for something, before she blinked, her gaze travelling downward. "There are no living Titans here."
"You think they left?" Connie asked, carefully leaning forward. The heel of his palm pressed against Athena's jaw as he stood on her right shoulder, close to her neck.
Weiss hopped from the crown of Athena's head. She landed on the rooftop's ridge, beside the chimney holding up the statues. A few streams of dark smoke appeared to rise from a few areas of the area. Given that the Titan's tended to release steam and smoke when they were hurt, it made sense for Titans to also give off steam or smoke when they were killed.
And that did not bode well. For Eren's survival, or for the group's chances of finding him alive and rescuing him.
"I think they were killed," Athena finally said, still looking downward. Then: "Look, a Titan corpse. The neck was crushed. I think the force detached the head from the body. There was a smaller corpse we just passed that had similar injuries."
Weiss momentarily closed her eyes. "I had a feeling this was too good to be true." She raised her head, opening her eyes to gaze at the dark clouds overhead. As if on cue, drops of rain started falling, pit-pattering on the tiles and drip-dropping across Weiss' face and hair. Weiss faced ahead.
"Unless one of you believes that Eren just happened to be whatever Titan that killed these two Titans over here, then we may as well cut our losses and head back. If the plan's gone this far to shit, then any other Cadets that're still alive hopefully formed some sort of group. Safety in numbers and all that," Ymir piped up. She stood on Athena's left shoulder, near the crook of Athena's neck. "Especially if everyone else in their original squads has already been wiped out."
Christa, who also stood on Athena's shoulder, beside Ymir, offered a small, sad smile at Weiss. "I don't like how it turned out either, but Ymir's right. We'd do better to look for anyone that we know would have a good chance of still being alive. Like Mikasa, or Annie!"
Armin, who sat kneeling on the crown of Athena's head, practically deflated. As Weiss watched the tears well up in his eyes and stream down his cheeks, she deflated too, and looked away.
She inhaled the scent of the rainfall, willing herself to calm down, in hopes of stabilising her quickly-beating heart before her breathing had a chance to follow its suit. Though she did pick up a quiet hitch in her breathing, she eventually calmed her heartrate and took the chance to just breathe. An ungodly amount of tension flooded out of her shoulders.
And so, Weiss swivelled in place, turning towards the direction of HQ—
HQ was swarmed. Overrun by Titans, apparently.
Several large Titans were scattered around the main, central building. Most of them had latched themselves onto the centre and outer buildings surrounding the main tower. Half the Titans she could see seemed to be crawling over the rooftops, with a few others scratching at the walls of the central building and its attached tower. Weiss didn't doubt that there could also be some of the smaller Titans – maybe around the four or five-metre range – already inside Headquarters. Perhaps inside the supply room, since she remembered it being on ground level and thus easy to get to.
Plus, Blake, Squall, Mina, and Thomas would be in there, too.
"Uh, hey..." Weiss called out to her group. She raised her empty hand, and with a quirk of her forefinger, gestured to HQ. She didn't check to see if everyone followed her gaze, but from a few gasps which sounded like they came from Armin, Connie, and Spring – with Spring hanging one-handed on the back of Athena's head, hands clutching a few thick strands of Athena's long blond hair, her grip tight and secure. In her other, hanging hand, she gripped one of her own Titan-killing swords, which looked a lot like Squall's Revolver Gunblade, though without the lion head chain or engraving.
Yang hopped from Athena's right shoulder, where she'd been stood beside Connie, and landed beside Weiss, on the rooftop's ridge. She placed her hands on her hips, her eyes wide at the sight of HQ. "Unless you and I plan on going over there to try and handle that problem, it looks like the overall plan's just been shot to shit," she told Weiss, her voice hushed. "If I'm not mistaken, the first part of the plan was that the soldiers were supposed to go to HQ and resupply themselves with gas."
"And the second part?"
"Go out and find any stranded soldiers that're somehow still alive and in one piece, and resupply them with gas so they can also get over the walls."
"And now that HQ's overrun, the supply team's probably walled themselves in. For the surviving soldiers to have any chance of getting over Wall Rose, at least one or two of us will have to get rid of those Titans." Weiss crossed her arms.
"Well... Blake should still be there, right?"
Blake Belladonna
Blake and Squall wandered side-by-side into the room she'd found him in earlier, with the elevator in the middle of the room. The lit candles flickered along each wall around the room. The elevator seemed to be missing, with just a square hole in the floor where the lift had been sitting earlier.
"I'm glad you were able to get in touch with Shaye. I thought it was a long shot, but when I noticed that my call with Yang had been operating as normal instead of on a local connection, I figured you might've had the same luck. I'm considering the possibility that there's a CCT tower somewhere inside the walls."
Squall planted his empty hand on his hip. "I thought that those only allow people to connect across continents or kingdoms via the towers in those regions. But entire worlds seems like a bit of a stretch. Well, if this is a different world, like you guys first thought."
"I like to think it's not possible for land like this to have gone unnoticed on Remnant. With three, fifty-metre-high walls named Maria, Rose, and Sina, and surrounded by humanoid, man-eating giants called Titans that're the reason these people live inside these barriers that they consider safe. And I haven't even seen a Grimm, not even any of the flying types, come flying in here yet – which, given the amount of fear and grief you'll find in any given soldier around here, should've happened right about now. Grimm feed, thrive off, and are drawn to negative emotions. They'd have already done what the Titans couldn't when the walls were made, and destroyed this place long ago, if it was a part of Remnant."
Blake stopped just short of the square hole in the floor. She crossed her arms, holding her elbows.
"Anyway. I'm glad Shaye chose you to come here. Our chances of handling this invasion look much better with you here to fight alongside us. The Cadets' chances of living through it also look a little better, in case you didn't notice it back there when you were healing Thomas and Mina."
She twisted to give him a small smile, and in response, Squall blinked and averted his gaze. He dropped his Revolver gunblade off his shoulder and scratched the back of his head. "Thanks," he muttered, almost under his breath, as if he didn't know what else to say to such a compliment.
Blake offered a quiet, soft huff, before opening her mouth to answer—
"Captain, please wait! There are only a handful of us left, sir! If the Titans were to attack here in force, we wouldn't have a chance in hell of holding them off!"
The shout had come from the supply room below.
Blake and Squall both snapped their attention toward the square hole. Sparing a quick glance at one another, Blake hopped down the hole, soon followed by Squall.
They landed quietly on the elevator directly below the hole, where it sat on the supply room floor. As they rose to stand upright, they found Captain Woermann again, this time standing over towards the left, close to the exit that would lead to outside. His back faced Blake and Squall while four Garrison soldiers, as far as Blake could see, stood before him, seemingly trying to confront him over his attempt to leave as they nervously blocked his path to the door. A few more soldiers stood only a bit behind Woermann, their eyes downcast and overshadowed with haunted looks.
"Well, looks like I called it," Blake quietly sighed under her breath, sparing a glance at Squall. He shot her a deadpan look, which lasted a moment (inner monologuing again, probably), and then settled his gunblade on his shoulder again, his eyes flicking toward Captain Woermann. Blake folded her arms again, following his gaze and huffing through her nose. "At least there aren't any Titans in here yet. When I saw the party that'd gathered outside, I thought some of the smaller Titans would be in here, but I guess we got lucky."
"...It bothers me. He bothers me." Squall planted his empty hand on his hip again. "These soldiers are supposed to be relying on him for guidance and support, aren't they? If he had any sense of decency or pride at all, especially as a leader, then he wouldn't be trying to leave. I doubt anyone would need him for anything outside of this building, let alone the city, at a time like this. Shouldn't this invasion be everyone's first priority?"
"It's not often I hear you that passionate," Blake decided to comment. Then: "I'm glad you're as pissed about this as I am."
"Please, sir! We need you here!"
"Out of my way, soldier. We have to get going. My expertise is needed to help direct the reinforcements."
"They should be getting any other Captains that're already in the interior to do that." Leaning towards Squall, Blake arched a brow in Woermann's direction. "So, why would they need him, of all people? They should know that he's supposed to be leading the Cadets and the supply team."
"Besides, we haven't even seen the Commander of the Garrison Regiment yet. I'd probably expect the Commander to be the one leading reinforcements here, mostly because they'd already be in the interior. There's little strategy to taking this guy off the field solely for that reason. Besides, from what we've seen of him so far, he'd just use it as an excuse to hide in the interior of Wall Rose," Squall said, his voice low and hushed.
A tense, quiet hitch could be heard in the breath of one of the girls, but any response she had appeared to die between her teeth and lips. But just behind her, on one side of her, another man from the supply team, with his head lowered and his brows knitted, spoke up: "Behind the safety of the inner gate, am I right?"
Woermann let slip a mix of a faint gasp and a click of his tongue. "Just what the hell are you implying?" he growled.
Blake spared a glance at Squall, before setting off with a Flash-Step. She stopped a few feet to Woermann's left, off to the side between the supply team and Captain Woermann. Her arms were still crossed, and she cocked her head to one side.
"I see you're not denying it then." She ignored their shocked faces, as well as the pure fear in Woermann's eyes, as he turned his head to stare at her. "Going behind the safety of the inner gate, I mean. Weren't you the one who said that desertion is punishable by execution? Shame you're not heeding your own warning."
"You don't know anything, you filthy outsider!" he roared at her, gripping his sword so tight his knuckles turned white. In an instant, he again aimed one of his blades squarely at Blake. She could hear the faint rattling of his sword, a result of his hands trembling.
Blake didn't move an inch, and her expression stayed deadpan. "One of my unique abilities allows me to leave behind shadows of myself to take hits while I run away. So I think, given my history, that I'm a bit of an expert when it comes to identifying people who act like cowards." Her eyes trailed from the blade, up to Woermann's eyes. She saw just how sunken and wide his eyes were – just how long he'd spent being shaken and scared. "Just how stupid do you think we are? You think anyone's gonna believe that you're needed for directing reinforcements? You were put here to lead and direct the Cadets. Other Captains—or, hell, even the Commander of the entire Garrison Regiment would be better chosen to lead reinforcements. You're just looking for an excuse to get the hell out of here. Do you even care about the lives of the Cadets – the kids – that you're leaving behind to die? Their deaths will be on your conscience. As they should be, since you're such a selfish bastard that you're using them all as decoys in an effort to save your own skin. Who decided that a coward like you was ever worth more than those children you sent out there? Because the way I see it, they're the ones who are actually brave and hopeful enough to fight out there – unlike you, Captain."
His blade only shook more. He gritted his teeth, as some of the soldiers on either side let slip almost silent gasps. A few of their faces looked brighter, while the others who still looked almost a bit dejected each seemed to be wearing the ghost of a smile.
"Just who—"
"Do I think I am?" Blake finished. "My name's Blake. I'm a Huntress that trains to kill monsters for a living. And I feel much better about myself now that I realise I'm a lot more courageous than you." She shook her head, and with an unimpressed look, she turned to the supply team. "Let him go behind the interior. The dude's dead weight, and a coward who has shown he only cares for his own survival. Let him go out there. Let's see if he's got good reason to have that much fear crippling him."
When they got back to the room in the tower, it'd started raining. Trost's current environment had simply looked gloomy and depressing before, but now the heavens seemed to be showering the whole of Trost District in Mother Nature's tears.
Blake unsheathed Gambol Shroud, holding the katana in one hand and her sheath in the other. She glanced behind her, at the supply team, all behind an arrangement of some tables they'd used to form a makeshift barricade. In the space between where the barricade and the double doors sat, were Mina and Thomas, with the latter thankfully having regained consciousness. The stumps making up the bottom of his legs had been cleaned and neatly bandaged, and, thanks to Squall, were no longer bleeding. Squall himself stood at Blake's right.
"We'll try and clear out as many as we can around the tower. Will you guys be alright in here?"
"Just don't die out there and we'll be fine!" Mina called out.
"Sounds good to me." Blake shrugged, stepping onto the windowsill of the shattered window.
The blade of her katana folded, forming Gambol Shroud's chain-scythe. She tossed it at the eaves of a rooftop in line with the window. Hopping from the ledge, Blake swung across the space between the buildings, before her feet landed on the building wall. She sprang from a shadow and somersaulted onto the rooftop, feet landing on the tiles. As she stood, she caught a glimpse of a Titan crawling on the rooftop to her left.
Blake grimaced, seeing the limbs at awkward angles. Its eyes looked fixated on her, while its head laid at an awkward angle on the front eaves. The kind of position a person's head would only be in if their neck was broken.
With a tug of her chain-scythe, the blade unfolded and formed her katana again. She gripped the ribbon and spun the katana, and then she swung, casting the katana at the Titan's face. The blade found purchase in the skin of its jaw. She sprang from a shadow again, the ribbon taut as it pulled her forth, her sheath poised. And with a last Flash-Step, her sheath sharpened by her Aura, she sliced the back of its neck, a violet streak of her Aura carving deep into the flesh.
She hopped from the side of its neck and rolled onto the tiles. Rising to her feet, she tugged the katana's ribbon, yanking the sword back toward her.
"You're just looking for an excuse to get the hell out of here."
Blake caught the katana's pistol-hilt.
She knew she'd been right about him, at least somewhat. She'd originally thought him to be paranoid and bordering on hysteria due to his fear, and the fact that just-about any Titan could jump out and kill someone as they turned a street corner, so being afraid and on edge would only be a reasonable response to the situation. But to be so selfish? To not at least try and act brave? To not decide to fight in spite of that fear, but instead try to make an enemy of her and Squall and anyone else who was trying to remedy the situation as best they could?
He didn't deserve his position. If Weiss, if General Ironwood, if the Soul Reapers in the Thirteen Court Guard Squads, had taught Blake anything, at least one of those things would be that any soldier – and especially those with higher-than-rookie status – who acted like Captain Woermann had done would make themselves a terrible excuse of a soldier. Hell, Blake doubted they wouldn't even be considered for Captain status.
A shaggy-haired, blond, emaciated ten-metre Titan ahead of her was approaching the building on which she stood. Every slow footfall pounded the pavement below.
"Their deaths will be on your conscience."
Blake pointed her katana at the Titan's face. A violet spark of energy shone at the blade's tip. "Support Style, Binding Art: Dozen Strikes of Imprisonment," she called, as the violet spark shot from the tip of her katana. It split into a dozen blade-shaped violet beams, which slammed into the Titan's midsection.
The Titan stopped, paralysed by the spell, just as it reached Blake's rooftop.
Leaping high into the air above the Titan's head, Blake twirled, with her blades poised to swing, as she propelled from a shadow, towards the back of the Titan's neck. She pushed into a spin as she dove down. Both sheath and katana sliced the nape, blood spurting from the wound. Crimson splashed across Blake's front, splattering onto one side of her face, prompting her to shut her left eye.
The violet beams shattered.
"Who decided that a coward like you was ever worth more than those children you sent out there?"
She sprang backward, into an open area between the central and outer buildings. The Titan-blood started to evaporate, freeing her form of the stains. Steam began to rise from where the blood sat. The Titan careened backward, toppling over and collapsing to the ground.
"Let him go behind the interior."
Another large footfall pounded the ground. The sound of the pavement cracking originated only a few feet behind her.
Her katana shifted to the chain-scythe, and she twirled to face the Titan behind her.
"The dude's dead weight, and a coward who has shown he only cares for his own survival."
A pot-bellied Titan, with thick limbs and extremities, snatched her up in a claw-like grip. Its left hand squeezed her midriff and arms tightly together, its hold pressing into her Aura Guard and draining it, bit by bit as it raised her above its mouth. She kicked her legs, trying to wiggle her way out of its hand.
She stared into its mouth, set wide open.
"Let him go out there."
"SQUALL!" She screamed. She didn't know what else to do, her mind was drawing a blank—and at a time like this?! She was supposed to be better than this!
"Let's see if he's got good reason to have that much fear crippling him."
"Fira!"
A blast of flames struck the Titan's wrist. The Titan roared, overcome by the pain, and it threw Blake away. The last two fingers on its hand opened as the gaping hole stretching from its wrist to its ring finger began stitching itself back together.
She dropped harshly on the ground, a small splash coming from the thin sheet of water gathered on the pavement as she tumbled aside. Both weapons fell out of her grip and scraped the wet ground, spinning away from her. A little violet pulse of her Aura Guard flickered across her form, appearing a bit more vibrant across her arms and midsection, indicating the range of the damage she'd suffered. She propped herself up on her palms before lifting herself up, raising her head. The Scroll on each wrist appeared to be undamaged.
Squall dove, spinning, into the Titan's weak-spot. A steel-blue streak followed his Revolver gunblade through the back of the Titan's neck. He landed on the back of its head as it bowled forward, crashing into the ground face-first. He hopped from it and made a beeline for Blake.
Her weapons laid on the pavement, almost accidentally discarded in the chaos, just a few feet to her own left. She stepped toward them, and grabbed them, acting as if nothing had happened. As if she hadn't just completely fucking froze upon staring death in the face.
Squall approached her, Revolver resting on his right shoulder. "If you used up too much of your reserve, then get off the field. I'd rather not hear you scream like that again. Especially when you should've tried to use your Semblance instead."
Blake sighed through her nose and closed her eyes, only to open them and let her gaze fall downward. "Sorry. I was distracted by what happened earlier, with Captain Woermann," she admitted. He should understand, given he'd been there to see her go completely off on someone for what had to be a second time today. "I think this situation has me more on edge than I originally believed. Not only was that the second—well, maybe the third outburst I've had today, but I'm starting to feel like I've probably antagonised him too much. I still don't think I was wrong in what I said—"
"Then why do you feel bad about it?" Squall raised a brow. "You only told him the truth."
"I know. But still, don't you think kicking him out was... cruel?"
"He wanted to leave anyway."
"But look at what happened to me just now. I froze. My mind blanked and I thought I was going to die and I was scared – just like he's been this entire time! What if that happens to him and he dies because he doesn't have someone like us to save him? His blood will be on my hands."
"Just like the blood of the Cadets and every other soldier will be on his. Besides, if a Titan doesn't kill him, his own regiment will order his execution anyway, given his desertion. That's on the hands of his Commanding Officer," he said as if it had to be obvious. He rolled his eyes as a huff escaped his nose. "I think your righteousness gives you a guilty conscience about these sort of things. If he wants to escape into the interior with his tail between his legs, then you may as well let him. Kicking his ass out of HQ only gave him what he wanted, you just didn't let him have the last word.
"And that's it. You don't get to argue this one. Now, get your damn head in the game and start fighting like you've got something to fight for. Because you have – you want us to get back to Remnant, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Then fight so we can all go home, alive and in one piece."
