Armin was awoken by a loud banging on the door of his single bed dorm, tumbling off the side of his cot and onto the floor.

Rubbing at his shoulder blades, which had not been very happy to greet the concrete floor, he blindly fumbled for the matches and oil lamp he knew had been set on his bedside, listening as the knocking only seemed to intensify.

After a moment or so he finally made contact with the rectangular package, preparing to light a match and prayed to whatever could hear him that this person had woken him up for a good reason, for their sake.

Once lit, the flame flicked weakly in front of his face, providing just enough light to begin to wake him up, and allowed for him to begin making his way over to the heavy wooden door that normally provided him with an interruption free sleep. It was made of solid oak and not only looked fairly cool, but also provided him with a level of soundproofing he could have only dreamed of within the barracks.

Apparently it had been put into place as his current residence had originally been built as a sort of medical ward for those with head injuries or sound sensitivity, but that had been abandoned as a far more optimal space opened up where a full Survey Corps barrack had once been.

He had been placed there in order to comply with the whole monitoring caveat of the Court order as it was far easier to monitor him (or at least keep up the guise of doing so) if he wasn't placed within the normal barracks, and it certainly got lonely at times.

Not that Armin was complaining though, as while he somewhat missed the banter between his bunkmates and the arguing between Jean and...it was nice to have a quiet area of his own to sleep.

Something that he was currently still being robbed of as he began to hear muffled shouting alongside the banging that was coming from the door. Whoever was calling for him certainly had something to say.

Upon reaching the door he quickly undid the simple key and latch system-which really wouldn't stop anyone in his opinion-and whipped the door open, preparing to either chide or salute whoever had decided that his presence was needed.

Surprisingly, or rather unsurprisingly as he should have guessed it would have been them, it was Squad Leader Hanji on the other side of the door, continuing to furiously rap against the thick wood even as the door continued to open.

Armin threw up a half hearted salute, doing as well as he could with an oil lamp still in his hand as he opened his mouth to greet them.

"Good morning-"

"Holy shit Armin you're not gonna believe, I mean I really can't but we checked them for-well it'll be a while before the results come back but that many people seeing the same thing is super unlikely, but not impossible-"

His face morphed from mild annoyance into confusion as they continued to rant in front of him, each statement making less sense than the last, however it was obviously something important.

Hanji seemed borderline manic, looking as if they'd awoken not too long ago themselves, as they continued to speak to him, grabbing the sleeve of his pajama shirt as they began to lead him away from the comfort of his dorm.

"Hey, wait, what's going on?" He tried to ask, not putting up much of a fight as they dragged him along the long hallway that led up to the outside entrance of their lab, but Hanji simply continued to mutter, Armin catching the words "Intelligent...Garrison...no possible way…" before he began to tune them out.

Although he'd never been woken up in the middle of the night like this before, he had faced many pre-dawn rants from Hanji as they tirelessly attempted to explain whatever they had found to him so that they could gain a second opinion or a helping hand.

Most of the time none of what they were explaining made sense though, either far too advanced or out of context for him to understand, so he had gotten into a bit of a habit of simply nodding along until Moblit was able to explain the situation to him.

Usually in a far calmer manner and with much fewer words.

However once he was dragged into the lab he noticed that Moblit was also in a tizzy, digging through documents and artist depictions, many of which looked like they had been drawn by him, as Armin began to realize that maybe this was far bigger than the normal small discovery.

He stood in the same spot for a minute, Hanji having let go of him once they entered the lab as he simply observed the two orbiting around each other, compiling notes and sharing mutterings as they went, but he soon began to grow impatient.

Why wake him up and drag him here if they were simply going to ignore him and share inside information among themselves? Why not just leave him to sleep if he was not going to be able to add anything to the conversation?

He cleared his throat, hoping to grab their attention for a moment, just to remind them that yes, he was still in fact here and totally out of the loop, but they simply seemed to continue on, tittering between the two main work tables.

Now officially annoyed he cleared his throat once more, far louder this time. He was aware that he was being childish but really. He wasn't about to sit here and be moral support as Hanji and Moblit did all the work on their own.

This time he did seem to catch Hanji's attention as they turned to him, gripping his sleeve once more and asking, "What're you doing just waiting over there? Come help us out."

Armin lurched forward as his sleeve was tugged with more strength than he had been expecting, only catching his footing at the last moment to avoid toppling into a table full of notes.

"Help with what?" He responded, pulling his arm back to his side, but rather than respond Hanji simply clicked their tongue at them, turning back to their papers, and for a minute Armin feared that he'd lost them once more.

"Weren't you paying attention on the way down?" They asked, and while Armin could admit that he probably should have been listening in his defense he was tired and they hadn't made much sense in the first place. "We need to sort through-no, totally revamp-but I'm not sure if that would mess with some of our already confirmed data..."

Ah. They were rambling again.

Regardless Armin walked over to at the very least make the piles that were currently being formed by the pair neater, as at the present moment they were little more than groups of papers haphazardly stacked and seemed to be at good risk of pile cross contamination.

Something which would end up making all of this sorting much more difficult in the future if not taken care of now.

So he began to separate the papers, pulling them together and clipping them into groups until he started to notice a pattern.

Although only vaguely related each pile could be linked back to providing information for their upcoming expedition, one stack noting the possible paths that would optimize titan encounters based on the weather, another listing both approved weaponry, and a third listing titan types.

Glancing over at the other piles Hanji was frantically adding to he noticed that they were all related to the expedition as well, however those stacks seemed to be far more focused on the end goal, capturing the Rogue titan.

"Has something happened with the expedition?" He asked, still trying to figure out exactly why he'd been pulled in here to help and what the hell could be so important that he was being forced to miss precious sleep. "Did it get pushed forward? Are there some new orders as for how we are to deal with the Rogue titan?"

Hanji didn't respond, simply grabbing one of the piles they had made and transferring them over to their desk, where they frantically searched for and ink and quill. It looks like he certainly wouldn't be getting any answers from them anytime soon.

He turned back to look at Moblit, and while the man still looked relatively shaken up he was no longer manically going through his desk and rather simply looking between a few documents and making notes in the margins.

Armin grabbed one of the clipped stacks he had made and tapped it onto in front of Moblit to get his attention, as hopefully he would be a bit more willing to explain what was going on.

The man looked back at him, exclaiming "Armin! When did you get here?"

"I've been here for quite some time." Armin sighed, "Although I don't exactly know what I'm supposed to be doing."

"Hm, I mean you are technically our resident expert on this topic so I'd assume the Squad Leader brought you here in order to either get your opinion or bounce ideas off of."

Huh?

Last time he checked, Armin wasn't the resident expert on anything, much less anything that had to do with the upcoming expedition.

"I don't follow." He responded, rubbing at his face. Honestly, this was turning out to be a much more frustrating experience than he had first assumed it to be.

"You don't…" Moblit paused for a moment before understanding dawned upon his face. "Did...did Squad Leader not tell you anything?"

Ah, well, there was part of the issue, and while he was sure that Hanji had probably told him something in that gibberish a little white lie wouldn't hurt anyone. "No, I'm totally in the dark here."

Moblit gave him a small smile, and all that Armin could think was that this better be worth it. That this really better have been worth all of the time and effort that he had just put into trying to get a simple answer.

"The Rogue titan came back, and it has certainly made a name for itself among the Garrison."

Ah.

That was certainly worth his time.

Armin's head was running a mile a minute and he swore that if someone put a mirror in front of him at the moment he would be able to see the smoke coming out of his ears.

"He-he saluted!?" Armin asked incredulously because no, there was no fucking way that a titan, no matter how smart, would do something like that.

Even a titan as human as the Rogue shouldn't, no, couldn't know the intent behind an action like that, and the intent was the least confusing part.

Why did he come back? What was the end goal?

According to the Garrison it made almost no attempt to get closer than fifty meters away from the Wall, actually stopping around that point even when it could have moved forward, so it was unlikely that he was attempting to launch an attack or trying to harm any of the soldiers present, making its reasoning for coming back all that more mysterious.

It had obviously known that the cannons were dangerous too, as Moblit had explained how the Garrison noted his cautious stance and movements when attempting to approach the cannons which was odd as well.

Since nobody had seen this titan up until Trost it was unlikely that it had been observing their weaponry beforehand and now that Armin thought about it the Rogue titan had already been wary of the cannons back then.

Meaning that this certainly wasn't anything new.

He snapped out of his thoughts as Moblit wove a hand in front of his face, exclaiming, "Do you see what I mean? There's a reason why Squad Leader is so frantic right now."

Oh yeah, Armin totally understood.

"I understand why, however I still don't get why I was called to get up." He explained, shoving all of the theories brewing to the back of his mind for now. "Forgive me, but at this point I really don't think I qualify as the Rogue titan expert at this point."

"You say that, yet you are the only one who has actually come into contact with said titan. If you'd prefer you could think of yourself as our primary source on the titular Rogue titan." Moblit told him, beginning to shove some of the papers he had clipped together himself into Armin's arms.

He accepted them absentmindedly, mulling a bit over what Moblit had said because, if he was being honest with himself, it was true.

He'd never really thought of it that way before but he was in a sort of unique position when it came to information about the Rogue titan as while he certainly hadn't been the only person to see it, he had been the one who spent the most time observing it.

It didn't automatically mean he had the answers to every action of the titan, but he had a bit of a leg up in deciphering them.

"Anyway, I assume that Squad Leader invited you out here to either confirm their own theories or gain some context as to what it may be doing." Moblit stated as he finished passing the stack on to Armin, who was now realizing that his arms were beginning to ache with the strain of the weight.

He ran his hand along a high shelf, grabbing a fresh spiral notebook, an inkwell, and a few small fountain pens. "As for me, I currently have a wonderful array of people who are more than willing to describe the Rogue titan to me in fresh detail."

Ah, that was right. As the Survey Corps scientific artist this was probably one of the best chances he was going to get to sketch the titan aside from seeing it himself.

Armin watched as Moblit got up and left, presumably to go talk with whatever Garrison members had delivered the information to the Survey Corps in the first place as he was left standing alone with a stack of papers still in his arms.

He glanced back over to Hanji, who still seemed to still be absorbed in whatever work they were currently doing, and began to walk over to them, papers jostling in the process.

No sooner had he set them down a reasonable distance from their tornado of work had they whipped around and asked, "You saluted during your speech to the Second Elite Squad, correct?"

"I um-" was that the name of the cannons squad? "-when I explained why the Garrison shouldn't shoot I did."

"So it's possible that he observed you doing the salute then? It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume that he saw your actions and how the surrounding squad reacted and assumed it was a sort of friendly gesture. After all, we've already established that he at the very least should be able to discern tone so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to-"

Armin let them ramble on, thinking more and more about the first part of that statement trying to thank back to any other time he had seen people saluting at Trost, yet the more he thought the more he realized that nobody else had.

Trost had been chaos, people scrambling to follow barely thought out orders as respect took a backseat to survival. People hadn't been saluting, they'd simply been listening to anyone who seemed like they may have even a shred of authority.

So his salute should have been basically the only one the Rogue titan had seen expect…

Except the titan had already been behind him at that point, hadn't he?

He'd had his back to Rogue at that point but with how close he'd been to the titan it would've had to almost totally flip around in order to see him, which had happened, but only after he'd dropped the salute.

While the Rogue titan may have been able to still hear him, there was no way that he could have seen him at that point.

"-which would make sense, considering that he's shown no urge to hurt humans and may actually think of us as-"

"Hanji, there's no way the Rogue titan could have seen me." Armin stated, cutting them off.

They stared at him in bewilderment, either not expecting what he said or not expecting to be cut off in the first place, and it honestly made Armin a little uncomfortable until their face dropped and their shoulders slumped.

"I figured that would be the case." They sighed, shoving aside a chunk of papers. "It would be too easy if that was what it was."

...now Armin felt bad.

"Ah, I'm sure that there's some other explanation for it though!" He quickly interjected. "We're still not entirely sure when he entered during Trost, or for how long he existed beforehand so it's entirely possible that he learned it from some other place or encounter."

"That's the problem though, isn't it? If Rogue learned it from somewhere or somebody else it means that we have unaccounted for interactions with humans, which means that we have no way of knowing how long it had been going on for."

Fuck, that was one of the possibilites that Armin was scared of, but was also becoming mroe and more likely with every interaction the Rogue titan had with humans.

Which only left two options for how and when those interactions had occurred. Either the Rogue titan had somehow been able to communicate with people inside of the Wall and keep it a secret for Walls knows how long, or he had gotten it from some people outside the Wall, an equally terrifying thought with equally terrifying consequences.

"Although that's not the only thing you are worried about, is it?" Armin asked, noting how Hanji had begun to chew on the skin of their thumb, a gesture he had only seen a few times from them but knew that it meant they had something on their mind.

They sighed, pulling their hand away from their face and admitting, "No, it's not."

"The issue is that we have no evidence of anybody interacting with Rogue outside of Trost." They tapped their fingers across their notes, smudging a small bit of ink that wasn't quite dry yet. "Meaning that we have to assume that he learned everything he knew about humans within that short span of time."

"But that would be almost impossible at this point, wouldn't it? According to Moblit it looked like the titan even knew the odd basic command such as 'set' or 'fire' so it might have been lurking around the Walls for an indefinite amount of time before Trost." Armin reasoned, still trying to piece everything together.

Hanji hummed before asking, "If somebody yelled something like 'Off' before a bunch of flares went off what would you assume the command to fire the flares was?"

"It'd be 'Off' right?"

"Well, it'd certainly be safe to assume so."

Armin tilted his head, not getting where they were going with this. Sure he could assume that from one action but it wasn't like he had any guarantee that that was the correct command.

Besides, hadn't they already decided that the Rogue titan's intelligence was similar to a dogs? For it to assume after only hearing the command once it would have to have human-

"Oh." Armin said aloud, glancing back down to the notes Hanji was taking. "You can't possibly think…"

"It's the most likely possibility in this scenario though, isn't it?"

Well, yes, but there was also just no way.

A titan with dog-like intelligence was improbable, but they had the evidence to prove so, but anything more was only impossible but also highly dangerous.

If what Hanji was thinking even had a possibility of being true they'd have to rework their whole capture strategy-no the whole mission itself to avoid what could be a catastrophic failure.

"What are we going to do about it then?" Armin asked. "If what you're saying is true the whole mission could be at risk."

"I know." Hanji sighed, moving their inkwell out of the way as they picked up a group of papers. "Come with me."

Armin was a bit bewildered by their sudden shift but began to follow them out of the tent, leaving the large stacks of papers behind.

"Where are we going?" He asked them as they began to make their way back into the Survey Corps headquarters, navigating the halls with an expertise that they could have only gained through years of traversing them.

"To tell Erwin that we need to revamp the mission." They responded, allowing for silence to hang in the air for a second before following that up with a much softer, "and to tell him that he was right. We need to prepare for a titan with what may as well be human intelligence."

Annie was the first of the three to hear about the whole situation, it being nothing more but newbie chatter at this point, and almost immediately wanted to slam her head into the nearest wall.

Or table.

Or really any hard surface at this point.

While some of the details seemed to be muddled or fabricated due to most of what she heard being spread through rumors but there were enough consistent points to get the general gist of the situation.

The situation being that Eren had decided to run up to the wall for god knows what reason, salute, and then run off back to wherever the fuck he had been previously, in the process allowing some very unfornature information to slip about how intelligent his titan truly was.

Which was a pain in the ass for multiple reasons, the least of which being that the more the Survey Corps knew about Eren the more likely they were to capture him on their first try, and personally Annie would prefer to not think they only had one shot at this again.

The Survey Corps being aware of intelligent titans was an issue in general though, as even though Annie had only been here for about three weeks and she was already starting to realize that the assumption the Survey Corps research division was incompetent was not only wrong, but dangerous.

Because of this assumption she'd gone out with Bertholdt to scope out the lab for the possibility of taking out the titans there-even if they had been incompetent it was still better to try and keep as much information as possible out of their hands-and had very quickly realized that it was not a place they wanted to be.

Mostly because they did not need to be dealing with the Armin-Squad Leader Hanji combo at any time but most specifically right now as they were working overtime to try and figure out what the deal was with Eren, aka the Rogue titan.

After all, while Annie may have exaggerated to Eren a bit back when she told him that if he shared a bit of his powers Armin was likely to figure him out, she hadn't said it simply to isolate him.

She'd said it because even as a 14 year old trainee whose only contact with titans was the very brief time in Shiganshina, the boy's intellect was frightening. She'd seen it both in class and during practical exercises, how he could take the smallest bits of information and just extrapolate upon them until he'd discovered what he wanted.

Frankly, it scared her, and she would really prefer to keep up this charade of them being upon the same side, but if it had just been him Annie wouldn't have had a problem sneaking in and offing the titans without a trace.

The issue was the Squad Leader, Hanji Zoe.

They were a vicious variable that neither Annie, Bertholdt, nor Reiner had been able to account for so far, mostly because they knew little to nothing about them and it looked as if all the information they did have was severely underestimating their abilities.

Or at least that was if Armin was to be believed.

He had only attended a few lunches, looking dead tired, but the shit that he had told them was almost unbelievable.

Somehow they had figured out shit about the titans that not even they knew about, such as their sleeping patterns and composition of their skin, and Annie had no clue how they had done it.

Which was a problem, as personally she was interested in keeping her identity as secret and mysterious as possible until she was off this godforsaken island and back in her hometown where nothing could hurt her.

(although that wasn't quite true either was it? She wouldn't be welcomed back with open arms and kind faces even though they said she would but they lied they always did-)

So she, along with Bertholdt decided to make the wise decision of staying the fuck away from that lab and everybody that had anything to do with it, a plan that would have worked fantastically if Eren hadn't decided to be his usual self and fuck everything up.

Although they probably should have expected something like that by now, given his less than stellar track record.

Regardless, as a new soldier they hadn't been given much information about the new mission aside from the basics, which included formation and end goal, but they had been able to get a small bit of information from the veteran members of the Levi squad, a group that had apparently been chosen specifically for this mission due to their skills and coordination.

Although they certainly didn't look like too much of a threat from what she'd seen.

Looks could be deceiving though, as while they hadn't shown off any truly outrageous maneuvers or exercises, the ease with which they completed the current given exercises made it obvious that this was nowhere near the extent of their skill.

And considering that even Mikasa and Jean who had both been considering prodigies on the 3DMG were struggling, this squad was not a group you wanted to be on the opposing end of.

Being on the same end was quite pleasant though, as despite her original warriness around the group she found herself warming up pretty quickly.

Deciding that, all things considered, Annie was both the most likely to keep their mouth shut and looked the least threatening out of the trio, Reiner and Bertholdt had fobbed the responsibility of information gathering onto her, which really only involved sitting with the veterans and listening to them talk.

Or, at least that had been the plan at first and would have worked perfectly if they hadn't been so hell-bent on getting her to talk along with them.

At first it was just stupid small talk, 'how's the weather outside', 'did you enjoy the new training excercise?', 'what was your favorite part about today's meal?',and because she wanted information she humored them far more than she normally ever would have.

She learned that their names were Petra, Gunter, Oluo, and Eld. That they were each only a few years older than her but had been on many expeditions beforehand. That they had almost a blind faith in Commander Erwin, as he had never led them wrong.

That none of them had had family in Trost or Shiganshina.

It came to the point where she actually caught herself looking forward to the lunch and dinner breaks as she knew that it would be another chance to talk with the group, to get to see what kind of lives they've led up until this point and to hear small anecdotes and stories that amused her far more than she would ever admit.

The information gathering almost became secondary to her own interests the more time she spent with the squad, to the point where it actually looked as if it was becoming dangerous.

Bertholdt was the one to call her out on it first, noticing her beginning to relay far more than mission information back to them, and suggested that she stop as she had already gained more information than they would have without talking and there was no reason to risk a slip of tongue.

So Annie let go, going back to sitting in Bertholdt and Reiner's vague direction and continuing to listen to whatever odd rumors popped up and decide whether they deserved her attention.

It was far lonelier than her previous seating, but Bertholdt had been right. There was no reason for her to continue to stay there and if she was being honest with herself she was getting attached to those people at a frightening speed.

And with the expedition coming up in about a week, that was a very scary thought.

Regardless of her previous experiences though with all of the rumors flying around and with the current uncertainty she really needed to get something concrete.

So back to the veterans table it was.

Petra was the first one to notice her slowly slinking over to the table, giving a soft smile and beckoning her closer, which alerted the rest of the table who turned to stare at her.

It made her a bit uncomfortable, but now was not the time to be turning back.

Oluo was the first to say something about it, haughtily stating, "So I see you've come crawling back." A comment which earned him a fairly hard smack courtesy of Petra.

"Ignore him." Petra told her as she scooted over to make room for Annie at the table. "He's just miffed that you'd prefer to sit with your friends than listen to his absurd stories."

Oluo squaked in indignation but didn't say anything else on the matter, leaving Annie to simply stare with indifference.

"What brings you back over here anyway?" Eld asked, Gunter quickly following him up with, "Not that we mind or anything, we just thought you preferred to sit with your friends."

Annie shrugged, attempting to come off as neutral as possible. "Not much, I just decided it may be an interesting change of pace."

"You say that, yet I assume that is not the whole truth, is it?" Petra asked, pushing her tray aside and resting her elbows on the table.

It looked like Annie had been found out far sooner than she had expected.

"Well, you are somewhat correct in that statement." Annie relented, beginning to eat. "I legitimately do enjoy hearing your experiences and learning what I may be in for once we go on expedition."

Oluo interrupted her with an undignified shout of "See! I was right!" but was ignored by both her and the rest of the people at the table.

"However I admit that I didn't head over here to simply hear some recounted experiences again."

Petra hummed, twirling a spoon in her hands while the rest of the table looked at her with a blank expression.

Ah, it looked like she was going to have to spell it out for them.

"The upcoming expedition." Annie stated with a sigh. "I've heard some pretty nasty rumors about something happening yesterday but still don't know if any of it is true and I'm getting a bit concerned."

"Oh, the thing with the Rogue titan right?" Eld asked and she nodded. His casual tone of voice caught Annie off guard a bit, as she'd thought that a big event like this would have been a large cause of stress for this Squad.

After all, they were the ones who would be directly attempting to capture Eren so knowing that their target had far more intelligence than previously thought should have at least been shocking to them.

But now that she looked at them, none of them seemed to be even the slightest bit stressed. In fact they actually looked kind of...relieved.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much." Eld told her with a wave of the hand. "Formation and basic procedures aren't going to change so you needn't worry about any new information being thrown at you the day of the expedition."

…

What?

Nothing was going to change?

That didn't make any sense, something like the intelligence level of the target being much higher than previously thought should have taken their original plans and basically ripped it to shreds.

Hell, if she had been the one planning the expeditions it would have ripped everything she knew to shreds.

Commander Erwin had already stated in court that he believed the Rogue titan at maximum had that intelligence of a dog so all of his plans should be centered around that, right?

So what did Eld mean, 'Formation and basic procedures aren't going to change'? Was Commander Erwin sending them out on what basically equated to a suicide mission?

She must have let her confusion slip through to her face because Petra began to smile at her, explaining, "I know it may seem a bit odd but apparently the Commander had some kind of hunch that a situation like this may arise, so the plan he created accounted for the titan possibly having a far higher intelligence than we had previously assumed."

"Better to be safe than sorry." Gunther shrugged. "Especially with something as big as this."

Annie stared with wide eyes. What the hell?

The Commander had been willing to form their positions, no the entire fucking expidition around what was essentially a wild guess?

What if he'd been wrong? What if he'd sent his entire military faction out into the field expecting to come across a genuinely intelligent titan and was met with nothing but a wild beast? What would they have been able to do then?

It simply didn't make sense, and it was extremely concerning to Annie for multiple reasons.

One being that Eren's little stunt didn't matter, they most likely would have captured him on either their first or second try regardless, meaning that she, Bertholdt, and Reiner had far fewer chances than they had originally thought.

And the other being that they apparently had a plan in place that they were relatively confident would be able to capture an intelligent titan, meaning that if she ended up shifting she would have to be far more careful than she had ever been.

Of course she had far more training and a much better grasp of her abilities than Eren did, so it is far more likely that she would be able to escape if captured but part of the problem was simply with the amount that she didn't know.

She still hadn't been informed of how they were meant to capture Eren, as every time she attempted to ask someone who may have known they either claimed that they didn't know or responded with a vague non-answer, so it was entirely possible that whatever the Survey Corps had come up with to capture Eren would be effective on her as well.

Fuck, fuck, this was just far too much. Every time she thought she was one step ahead something would come up from behind and blindside her forcing her to rethink every little bit of her plan before spitting it back in her face again, and she was starting to get a bit sick of it.

(although she supposed she couldn't complain. Lack of information and planning had been the main reason for their failure at Trost, which she was not willing to repeat)

But she could still work with this. She'd have to talk it over with Bertholdt once more but a lack of change in the Survey Corps plans also meant a lack of major changes within theirs.

She would just have to be extra careful.

"It certainly takes a bit of getting used to, but I promise Commander Erwin knows what he's doing." Petra smiled at her. "I mean, if he didn't there's a good chance that none of us would even be here."

She was going to make this mission succeed at whatever cost necessary.

"Yeah." Annie said softly. "I think I get it."

She wasn't going to fail again.

The table went back to chatting amicably, recounting experiences that they had had with some of Erwin's more far fetched plans and how they had panned out but Annie continued to sit and think.

She looked up at their smiling faces, a jovial attitude spreading as they continued to joke and poke fun with one another.

At whatever cost necessary.

Eren didn't make it back to the forest before dark.

He had known from the moment that he had begun running back from the Wall that he was unlikely to even get to the point where the forest was within view, but hey, a guy can hope.

Besides, he'd assumed that he may have been at least able to push through the grogginess and continue on his merry way, as every other time that he had passed out within this form he had been lying still, but unfortunately his assumption had been proven wrong.

He woke up with his face in the dirt and a small titan digging into his leg, an overall unpleasant feeling, and while he normally would have ripped it apart on principle if he was being honest this thing looked pathetic.

Barely bigger than a human itself the titan struggled to even break through his flesh and get a bit to eat. Actually Eren was pretty sure that he was healing faster than this thing could damage him.

So he watched it for a few minutes waiting to see if it would realize that it's prey of choice was not only far more powerful than it but also awake and watching, but after a few minutes of this terrible display it still hadn't noticed so he assumed it never would.

He ripped the titan off of his leg, crushing its upper half in his hand before letting the rest drop to the ground, already turning to ash and began to think.

At his best estimate he was about fifty kilometers away from the forest he'd been calling home and probably wouldn't have many issues with heading back considering the fact that it was likely still cleared of titans but for some reason he didn't feel satisfied with this solution.

For some reason it almost felt like the easy way out, to simply head back and wait for Annie to rescue him somehow while he sat on his lazy ass like a damsel in distress.

And while he was fully aware of the inherent dangers of being stuck in a titan horde-that time in the forest would probably never leave him-if he was being honest he didn't think that that was a possibility at the moment.

He'd taken out far too many titans around the forest area for them to truly horde up without him noticing and even then he had an endless amount of area to run and was far faster than all of the titans around him.

So it wouldn't hurt to stick around, right?

Just to take out a few more titans and make Annie's job easier, not because he knew that the moment he went back to the trees he would be bored out of his mind or anything.

'Yeah, it'd be fine' Eren thought as he began to get up, now noticing the few sleeping titans around him.

Most were fairly far away from him at this point however the fact that they were still sleeping puzzled him. That smaller titan had certainly been awake, and so was he for some reason.

Er, well, he knew the reason was that the sun was beginning to rise, golden rays peeking over the horizon and bathing everything in a sheet of light, but while he could understand the smaller titan being awake he didn't really understand why he was.

One of the few things he'd paid extra careful attention in class during training was titan behaviors and they had made a pretty big deal about how titan sizing affected their awareness and sleeping times as that would be really important once he was in the Survey Corps.

(It was also because even with all of their mysteries titans made for more sense than physics but that's besides the point)

So considering that he was on the larger side for titans he'd assumed that without shelter he'd either be one of the last types of titans to wake up or he'd wake up once he was put in sufficient enough pain/danger.

But he hadn't awoken from that. The titan digging into his leg was annoying, sure, but he hadn't even noticed it until he'd gotten over his initial grogginess, and even then the pain had barely registered.

Besides, he knew what waking up from pain felt like, and it was nothing like the gentle rousing he had just experienced.

He supposed it didn't really matter in the end though, as it was likely something to have to do with the fact that he was a shifter and didn't exactly follow the normal titan rules, and if it wasn't he didn't really have any way to know until Annie showed up.

Plus it provided an easy way to deal with the possible hoarding problem by getting rid of the ability to group before they could even think about getting to him.

And so Eren amused himself by jogging lightly back in the direction from which he'd came, a small trail of larger titans quickly greeting him. They had likely been trying to follow him back from the Wall before succumbing to the lack of sun like him.

Unfortunately for them this also made it far easier for him to find them and take them out, simply crushing their napes underfoot before moving onto the next.

He continued to follow the trail until just the tip of Wall Rose was in view, knowing that at this time of morning while most titans weren't awake the Soldiers atop the Wall certainly would be, and with his presence yesterday they were likely far more on edge than before.

Yesterday he'd had the element of surprise on them which was one of the only reasons that he'd been able to escape relatively unscathed but if he were to head back today he certainly wouldn't get that luxury, so he simply hovered around that area, destroying any sleeping titans he could find along with a few small ones that were currently awake.

Once he was satisfied with his work and could see that medium sized once were now rousing he decided that he should probably head back to his normal territory, or at the very least the area where he was less likely to be swarmed.

He glanced back at the Wall one more time for no real reason but this time something was different. The cannons were still indistinguishable to him from this distance but the long streak of purple heading up into the sky certainly wasn't.

Eren couldn't tell whether it had come from outside of the Wall or on top of but someone had fired a flare, probably to communicate with another stationary guard somewhere on the Wall.

But for some reason he couldn't remember ever going over the flares that the Garrison used to communicate and the color bugged him. What was purple again? Wasn't it supposed to be a…

Eren's eyes widened. Purple was the emergency flare, the call for everyone around to know that there was a serious situation.

But why would they fire it from atop of or in front of the Wall? The cannons shouldn't have had any issues with taking out hordes of titans that close and most of the more difficult ones to deal with should still be asleep.

Plus the Wall itself was almost a perfect protection from titans on the ground so there wouldn't be a reason to fire from the top of the Wall unless-

Oh fuck, oh fuck!

In seconds Eren was sprinting towards the Wall, legs pumping as fast as they would go as he did his best to get there as fast as possible.

The only reason someone would have for firing a purple flare atop the Wall would be if it was in danger. If the Armored or Colossal had reappeared and were now attempting to take out another portion.

But fuck, why now?

Were they attempting to make another hole in the Wall like at Trost? Were they upset that Eren had foiled their plans and were simply trying to make the best of a failure once more?

In the end it didn't matter but it didn't stop the thoughts from invading his mind as he continued to approach the Wall.

Which was also when he realized that he certainly couldn't see the Colossal titan and the Armored must have been very well hidden if it was still here.

There wasn't a gaping hole in the Wall yet either meaning that that wasn't the issue yet.

Eren's sprint faltered as he continued to review the area. None of the cannons that had come into view were in position, each facing away from him even though he knew they had no reason to be.

There were also far more personnel atop the Wall than there had been yesterday for some reason although he still couldn't make out any of their features and rather than scrambling and shouting orders they were simply staring at him.

He slowed down into a jog and then stopped, continuing to keep his eyes on the soldiers in case there was an emergency he just wasn't aware of yet but none of them seemed to move, not even to reach for the blades he knew were stocked within the holders upon their 3DM gear.

So why was the flare fired? Had some new recruit just messed up orders and accidentally shot it off?

Well no, that couldn't have been the case. If so there probably would have been a lot more panicking and bar that, the sound of some poor soul getting their ass chewed for messing around with flares, but there was just silence and the soldiers staring at him.

Almost as if they had been expecting him.

And then it hit him, they probably had been expecting him.

Although from where he had been he could only see the tip of Wall Rose because of their increased height they had likely been able to see him from about a mile back.

They knew he was here and had used this opportunity to get him to unwittingly give them more information about himself, more specifically that he knew what the flares meant.

They had tricked him and he had played right into their fucking hands.

Eren released a sharp cloud of steam out of his mouth, pivoting on his foot and sprinting back towards the forest. He knew that he should have just gone back, he never should have set foot anywhere near the Wall.

He had made his point yesterday and should have just waited until Annie had gotten a chance to come help him out, however long that would've taken, but now he'd fucked it all up.

When it came to the salute he did yesterday while it was outside of titan behavior it wouldn't be too hard for most people to chalk it up to mimicking, something that anything with the barest bit of intelligence and arms could do.

It certainly shocked them and would continue to be talked about for a while, however it wasn't impossible for a titan who had already known how to carry a boulder and seal a gate to have enough intelligence to mimic.

But the flares? That was something else and he knew that they would hone in on that.

Flares hadn't been used during Trost so if they were to assume that he had learned of them some other way they would have to assume that he had been following the Survey Corps around outside the Walls for a while, and he knew that nobody would be satisfied with that answer.

His actions here would only lead them one step closer to the truth, that he wasn't actually a titan but rather a human in a titan's body, if they hadn't figured it out already.

Eren didn't want to think that was the case but they had known, they had known he would respond to the emergency flare.

They had known and risked titans piling up against the Wall just so that they could provide proof of their hypothesis, certain that it wouldn't fail.

They knew that he somehow had insight into how the military operated and from there it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to say they he, or at the very least someone else, had invaded and gotten the information necessary for him to know such things.

Regardless of whether they thought it was him or someone else the outcome would be the same. Tighter regulations and more testing, both things that neither he nor Annie could afford given their situation.

Fuck.

Fuck.

He'd really messed it up hadn't he?

'I'm so sorry Annie.' was the only though running through his head as he made his way back to the forest.

Atop the Wall with a still smoldering flare gun Hanji smiled.

"Ah, this really has become interesting, hasn't it?"