AN: I moved a section from chapter ten over to this chapter, the part where Marceline talks about venom, so if you notice repeat material, it's just a bit of editing. This chapter is purely self-indulgent. It was also late coming out because I took some time to work on another story of mine that I hadn't updated in a year. I hope you all enjoy a little Levi eye candy for Halloween!
A frustrated Hange threw open the doors to the officers' private gym. Her eyes, unobscured by her glasses, narrowed in on the solitary occupant performing pushups on one of the mats. She cocked back her shoulders and marched over to him.
"Levi! We need to talk!" she demanded, stopping short of the mat and crossing her arms. She looked down at him with a frown, her current mood on full display.
The raven-haired Scout didn't falter from his pushup position as he used his right arm to lower himself to hover close to the ground, and then back up in a steady rhythm, his left resting behind his bare back. The skin of his right arm pulled taunt over lean muscles as they contracted, tightening over and exposing veins with the fingers of his right hand spread flat against the ground, taking the weight of his torso. He performed pushup after pushup as easily as if he were flexing his pinky finger, not breaking a sweat until he was well past a hundred.
"Sure, it's not like I'm in the middle of something," he answered dispassionately.
She didn't wait for him to pause his workout for him to give her his undivided attention, so he didn't. She already knew from years serving with him that his workouts were important not only his duties as an officer, but his general mood. If she wanted something from him, her best bet would be to wait until after he was done. Something must've really ruffled her petticoats if she was bothering him now, so he prepared himself for the ensuing argument and lamented the lost peace and quiet for the rest of his workout.
"This is absolutely ridiculous!" she told him. "You're being unreasonable, you've rejected all my requests for authorization on my experiments! Every single one! You even wrote on my request form for the incendiary experiments: 'ask me again after I'm dead'. You're not even pretending to take this seriously!"
He paused mid-pushup to look at her with a deadpanned expression. "Did you think I was joking?"
"You're purposely impeding my project!"
"Tch, I am not," he scoffed. His breath fanned out and blew the fringe of his hair hanging in his face before resuming his pushups. "I only authorized the requests I thought you could handle."
"You didn't authorize any of them," she pointed out through gritted teeth.
"Exactly."
The rarely angered squad leader stared down at him. "I don't like that you're infringing on my department and putting my capabilities into question, to hell with what Erwin says!"
"And I don't like that you put your pets over the safety of others," he shot back, "and I also don't like being put into a position where I have to use physical force on a fellow soldier. You did the exact same thing in the courtyard that you did on the expedition when your reckless actions almost got Oluo's head bitten off. The way I see it, you haven't learned a damned thing from that."
"This is different!" she insisted vehemently. "There won't be a bunch of useless, gawking bystanders like last time. It'll be me and my people. Science comes with risks, everyone on my team for this project knows that and are prepared to lay down their lives for the sake of knowledge and discovery, you don't have to worry about them."
"Yeah, well, there's one nerd on your team of nerds who doesn't have the say-so to make such an oath, not while she's involved with the Scout Regiment, anyway. I don't like stepping on other officers' toes anymore than I like them stepping on mine, but you're getting in the way of my orders." His long reply came with no labored breathing or strained words as he continued to do pushups.
"So Erwin did put you on protection detail for Marceline," Hange huffed, as if it was something she had long suspected, "and for the record, I'm not mad about what happened. I know that you were within your rights to do what you did. Besides, it didn't even hurt."
"That's a relief," he replied sarcastically, "not twenty-four/seven protection, only for certain occasions, but it would be in everyone's best interest if I take preemptive measures when I feel it necessary. You know that if anything happens to her, it's all over for us. We can't have princess scuffing her knee. The Capital would have a field day with it."
Hange shook her head. "Marcy's not going to like that."
Levi clicked his tongue at the mat below, his brow pinching together. The Witch was in an annoying position where as long as she didn't cross a certain line, there really wasn't anything that Levi could do to her. It gave her the leeway to talk to him like she would any other person, except she wouldn't even do that. She wouldn't talk to him like "any other person" because he knew that she had the tendency to mold her personality and mannerisms around whomever it was she was speaking to, but she was nothing but candid during her interactions with him. Was it because she knew he would call her out and perhaps showed some respect for him by not insulting his ability to detect falsities in people, or was it because she didn't see him as someone worth playing this game of make-believe of hers with? He didn't know, yet.
He did know that she was contradictory as fuck, though, and his attempts to follow her tangled patterns of behavior were starting to give him whiplash. She spent an entire afternoon going on and on about the cruel, unyielding nature of the world and how ultimately pointless it all was, and her strict belief in science and reason, and yet Hange claimed she was superstitious at times? She acted as if she was this super friendly social butterfly, and yet she took subtle digs at people she didn't like and seemed to get overwhelmed and irritable in noisy settings? It was like watching two minds trying to occupy one body. One of them had to be an act, and he was leaning on the former, but he couldn't tell for sure. The Witch didn't even seem to know herself sometimes, since one constantly bled into the other, seemingly without her realizing it. How hard was it to pick one thing and fucking stick with it?
It also rubbed him the wrong way that she could act outside of the Scout Regiment's interest and completely independent of it without repercussions, but balls if he hadn't tried to explain that to Erwin. The blonde was giving zero fucks when it came to her. Maybe they were fucking after all.
"I don't care what Marcy likes," he practically hissed, "she'll have to deal with it, just like you, Four-eyes."
"Well, you know, the longer you drag this project out, the longer she's going to be here, Smarty-pants."
When Levi ignored her, it only encouraged Hange to nag him further. He was only half-listening as he pulled himself up and stood, deciding he was done. He had lost count, anyways.
He walked over to where he had hung his towel, using it to wipe the thin sheen of moisture from his skin. The fact that it was so thin was a disappointment, having barely gotten started with his workout. He draped the towel over his shoulders and picked up his canteen, throwing his head back and downing the entire reserve since he wasn't going to be needing it. Water leaked out the corner of his mouth and streamed down his neck, the cool rivulets following the pronounced cords beneath his skin. He released the canteen with a soft exhale and used the back of his hand to wipe his mouth.
Staring vacantly at a spot on the floor with Hange's obnoxious voice as a backdrop, he carded his hand through his damp hair.
What a pain in the ass.
He didn't feel like doing the rest of his workout, a decision that he would regret later. He worked out twice a day when he wasn't on an expedition, three if he could manage it, once in the morning and once in the evening. If he didn't, he would get too restless and irritable and then he wouldn't be able to get any of his work done and he would make sure everyone suffered for it. It was common knowledge that he adhered to a strict workout regiment and it was considered blasphemous to interrupt it; solidarity between brothers in arms went out the window. They would go near feral to weed out the culprit and offer them up for slaughter in order to separate themselves and avoid his wrath.
They probably assumed it had something to do with him wanting to remain the top performing soldier in the Scouts, but that wasn't it. He hardly cared about that; he could do that even without all the added training. It was just something he had to do in the time between expeditions, otherwise he would be stuck at the end of the day with more energy than he knew what to do with, and then he would get even less sleep then he usual did.
Despite never showing any outward signs to the contrary, Levi didn't feel like others felt, not when it came to periods of inactivity. People had their latent periods, but he felt like a coiled spring, all the time. Only people who have known him for years like Hange have ever noticed. It wasn't just dumb luck or incredible reflexes that he was able to adapt and counter during unexpected assaults. He was always expecting it, even if he didn't know what "it" was until half a second before.
It was hard for him to explain, because it was something he had been dealing with all of his adult life, and he found it difficult to explain things that just were by thinking of a creative round-about explanation or a metaphor. He would rather just suffer in silence about being in a persistent state of alertness than try to find the words.
It could be in part due to his upbringing, which had been his initial guess, since living in the underground required constant vigilance, but over the years, he came to realize that it was actually due to him being an Ackerman.
Nobody knew why or how, but the Ackerman bloodline was special, clearly cut from a different cloth than everyone else.
He had only started to notice the amplified physiological traits between him and others when he had entered the Corps. The people he had to compare himself to before then were Kenny and Furlan, since they were the only ones he had ever shared a living space with.
Kenny had fought and fucked as often as he had breathed. An extreme didn't seem like a good basis for comparison, not at the time. Levi had fought and fucked, too, of course, but not nearly as much as the old man, and it was more of an annoying urge that needed to be met. He would go out of his way to avoid it if it meant saving himself the hassle, but Kenny? He didn't think he had ever spent an entire day with Kenny where there wasn't a thug or prostitute, or both, in the general vicinity.
Thinking back on it, and knowing what he knew now, more of Kenny's behavior should've tipped him off. Despite always complaining that he could never get any peace, Kenny really wasn't good at sitting still. Some of the crazy shit he pulled just to avoid it; Levi almost got mugged once when he was ten because Kenny had left him standing in the middle of the street with a month's worth of rent on him to go screw a prostitute in an alley, and then he almost got shot because Kenny didn't feel like paying her and her pimp started shooting at them.
Granted, he understood the struggle now, pussy was sublime, and the only alternative to sinking a knife into someone's gut or slicing titans since a male Ackerman's "prime" was pretty much their entire life, but he was hardly going to get shot in the ass over it - no broad was that good. The fighting and the women had been like a compulsion for the old man, especially when there wasn't something going on. He dealt with same issues, had been since puberty, but he couldn't understand why it had all seemed so much worse for Kenny. Maybe that had just been his personality. Levi always did think he had lived life with too much of a hedonistic fancy.
Maybe it got worse with age?
If that was what he had to look forward to, that was fucking depressing.
He supposed he could ask that gloomy brat about how she dealt with these issues- if she even had them; female bodily functions might as well be black magic as far as he was concerned - but there wasn't any way he could think of to broach the topic without sounding like a perverted old man ("Excuse me...cousin? Do you ever experience periods of perpetual horniness? Oh right, you women have that thing you do every month. Never mind, then").
He hadn't noticed it with Furlan, either, because he had just assumed that maybe smart people channeled their excess energy to fuel their big brains. The corps provided more than enough of a variety for him to finally realize that even in a resting state, he outperformed others.
His body temperature ran a few degrees higher due to the sheer amount of energy that was running through his body; he was practically a furnace in the winter, making him even more popular. His metabolism was miles ahead of others, and he was hungry, always hungry, but his background taught him restraint in that regard, to keep it at bay during times when food was scarce. When it wasn't, he ate his solid three meals and was still prone to snacking: crackers, biscuits, cookies, whatever was available and not in short supply. He could out-eat that bottomless pit, Blaus, and be a lot neater while doing it, and could out-drink someone of Mike's size and weight without getting so much as a buzz. He didn't drink black tea because he needed the caffeine. He needed something in his stomach - and because he liked it, of course. Being constantly hungry and thirsty, needing to ingest even when his body wasn't doing anything because it burned through everything so fast, was there any other explanation for the amount of tea he consumed in a day?
Multiple workouts helped cut down the worst of these symptoms, because that was what they were to him, symptoms. This whole Ackerman thing felt like more of an affliction when it wasn't being of any use to him, like itchy balls or athlete's foot. It wasn't until he went on expeditions that he ever felt truly worn out enough to properly relax, or if he kicked some shithead's teeth in, or if he found soft and supple company able to handle his stamina.
"Okay, okay, okay, maybe incendiary experiments are a bit too much right now, but what about the hydro tests? Pain response? Reproduction?" Hange suggested.
"The day I witness two titans bumping uglies is the day I slice my throat open," he replied, using his towel to dry his hair.
"I didn't mean sexual reproduction!" she harped. "Titans don't have any uglies to bump, so where do they come from? Do they spring up from the ground? Do they break off from one another like cells and there's some giant mass of flesh outside the walls that acts as the hub? Are they a hive mind?"
"Why didn't you ask them that when you were talking about the weather?"
Hange gripped the sides of her head and let out a sound of frustration before throwing her arms down. "You know what? Maybe I'll just tell Erwin you already said it was okay!"
He didn't skip a beat at the threat. "I'd tell you that love can't flourish on lies, but instead I'm going tell you to go fall down a well full of shit."
"Leeeviiiii!" she wailed. "Why do you hate me so much!"
He flinched at the high pitch of Hange's scratchy voice and relented, just to get rid of her.
"You can pick one - one experiment, and I'll authorize it. If you can do it without getting anyone killed then we can talk about more."
Instead of triumph or gratitude, she looked horrified. "But how am I supposed to choose? I've got so many!"
"Not my problem." He wiped his hands of the matter with his harsh reply and ran his towel over his hair again, not bothering to wait for a much deserved Thank You.
From her pinched expression, the Lieutenant could tell that she wasn't happy with the piss poor compromise, but she knew when not to press her luck. She could nag him until the titans came home to little effect; Levi wasn't known for his compromising skills. She marched back out of the gym with same amount of irritation that she had entered with, neglecting to close the doors behind her.
Levi watched her go with impassable expression, scoffing "tch, whatever" before moving to clean up the equipment from his workout.
~O~
In the headquarter's lab, Marceline hovered over a petri dish with Armin standing next to her, observing the reaction taking place in the petri dish in front of them.
It was a slow, lazy day for the Scouts, and on those days Armin would sometimes come in and she would show him quick, easy little experiments that he could "ooh" and "aah" at for a while. She suspected that Jean was supposed to be somewhere else, but instead he was hiding out in the lab, sitting on one of the tables, reading the newspaper that she had left there.
Marceline was showing the blonde Scout what happened when hydrogen peroxide came in contact with blood, using some of the leftover samples she had collected from the farmer's cow. Armin prodded her with questions on how the titan experiments were going, but she wasn't liberal with her answers. She didn't need to be, there just wasn't anything interesting to report.
Hange's devastation towards Erwin's decision to make Lieutenant Levi the overseer of their experiments wasn't unfounded. The raven haired officer was forcing them to fight tooth and nail for everything. She could only hope that it was temporary. Hange had been sulking in the lab the past few days, so since she wasn't there now, she must be trying to convince the Lieutenant to change his mind.
"How long is it supposed to take?" Jean asked, referring to their experiments with the titans.
"Mm, the scientific process isn't linear," she told him, using the pipette to add more drops of blood to their solution of hydrogen peroxide, causing it to bubble and fizz into a pink foam. "We won't be able to give a solid estimation at this stage. It could take a long time."
"That sucks."
"Aye," she agreed. "We'll find an explanation for the titans soon enough. We just have to be patient."
"What if there isn't one?" Armin asked, his voice quiet. Marceline looked at him to see him staring down at their experiment with a frown. "What if the titans just exist only to eat humans and there's no way to ever stop them?"
Hmm, maybe she shouldn't have gone with the blood experiment.
"Such a downer," she tsked. "We live in a world where everything happens for a reason, Armin. Everything has an explanation for why it's there and how it came to be. Just because we don't know the reason behind the titans, doesn't mean there isn't one, okay? Sky Daddy wasn't mad so he threw a big tantrum that created thunder and lightning so rain would fall. We're not dancing around a fire, chanting with drums hoping for rain. The answers are there, we just have to ask the right questions and look in the right places."
Armin could only nod and hope that she was right. He knew that she was. Everything having a logical explanation was something he had always believed, but that belief had taken a severe blow after Shiganshina, when the Colossal Titan appeared seemingly out of nowhere only to disappear just as inexplicably moments after. The chemist gave him a reassuring smile, though, and patted his head lightly. He always felt a slight shudder go down his spine whenever Ms. Russell fixed her gaze on him.
It was her eyes. Her eyes didn't match the rest of her, he thought. Her skin was warm, speckled with sun marks and her smile wide and welcoming, a meld of autumn and earthy tones, but her eyes were an extremely pale blue, glacial almost. They were pretty, of course, like the rest of her. They just didn't belong among the warm brass and brunette. Brown, hazel or even green would've matched better, but maybe he only thought that because of Annie. Annie had pale eyes, accompanied by pale hair, pale skin and a flat expression.
"Lets move on to the next experiment," she announced, holding her hands together, "I'm getting bored with this one."
Marceline put their used equipment in a nearby sink and set to work collecting the equipment for their next experiment. She came back with a beaker and a liquid container with a diabolical warning label drawn on the front.
She handed Armin goggles and a face mask. "Here, put these on."
He did what he was told, placing the goggles over his eyes and the mask over his mouth, noticing immediately how uncomfortable it was. "Is it supposed to be hard to breathe with this on?"
"Yes, that's how you know it's working."
Once she had everything set up, she reached out an open hand to the Scout behind her.
"Jean, hand me my wieners."
He grabbed the bag of sausages next to him and tossed it to her. She caught it and opened the bag. The smell wasn't pleasant since they were more than a little past their prime. She took one out and placed it on the counter before placing her hand on the lid of the liquid container, turning the whole of it so that the label was facing them.
"Now, this is a solution called, piranha solution, a mix of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide that creates a dangerous acid that can shred through just about anything organic and can even be explosive if mixed with the wrong thing."
"Are you going to use it on the titans?" Armin asked.
She beamed at him. "I sure hope so!"
Marceline picked up the sausage and dropped it into the solution where it immediately began to hiss and bubble. The sausage buoyed around in the solution, turning black as coal as the acid ate away at it. Armin's eyes widened at the angry reaction and he leaned in closer.
Watching acid break down organic material was always a captivating experience. It was interesting to watch it rip away and burn, intrusive thoughts forcing a hypothetical image of you sticking your entire hand into it just to see what would happen, even though you explicitly knew what would happen. She leaned in closer like him, bending at the waist and crossing her arms over the table top, expressing a more appreciative look as they watched.
"Hey, why aren't you married, Marceline?" Jean suddenly asked, derailing their musings.
Armin turned to chastise him for the inappropriate question. It was subject that he and a few others had wondered about, but nobody, except Jean apparently, was brave enough to ask. The reason could be deeply personal for a young, attractive female like Marceline not to be married by now. For all they knew maybe she was married, or had been at one point. Plenty of reason not to ask. Lucky for Jean, Marceline didn't give any indication that this was the case. She only continued to watch the sausage dissolve while giving the question a dismissive wave of her hand.
"I prefer chemicals, they're so much more reliable than boys."
"I'm serious," Jean insisted.
"I don't know, it's just never happened," she said, adding another sausage into the solution. She didn't mean to sound indifferent. He was just fishing for something that wasn't there.
"Ever come close?"
"No, not really."
Jean pursed his lips. "…what do you like in a man?"
"I like men who mind their own business."
Armin chuckled.
"Hey, I'm just trying to get a grasp on the female mind here," Jean replied defensively. "You're the one who's always saying that a curious mind should be encouraged."
She did say that, didn't she?
"Oh, alright, Mr. Sensitive," she relented, "but my tastes aren't as complex as you probably think they are. All I want is someone who is smart, funny, and kind."
Most would accuse her of having impossible standards since she had shot down every potential suitor that had ever approached her, both as herself and as Sally, but it wasn't that she had a long laundry list of what she required in a man like some women. It was mostly outside factors that influenced her decision to be single. It was never the right time or she had too much going on. The closeted romantic in her also had its say in that none of those men had felt "right". There had been nothing wrong with them - well, most of them. They just weren't right, for her.
It wasn't very practical to wait for a sign from the universe when choosing a partner, and there were plenty of people who she had disliked upon initially meeting only for her to change her mind later, but you can't force a romantic attachment.
She didn't want flings. She didn't want to settle. She wanted the one and only that one, and she was prepared to go without until she found him - if she ever did.
Not putting herself out there was a good way to prepare herself for spinsterhood, but it was just how she felt. Her life was already complicated enough without adding a string of romantic attachments into the mix.
Plus, putting your fingers into unfamiliar holes wasn't just good advice for someone who handled snakes, and was just good life advice in general.
Her daddy had always said that when it came to relationships, the best chance you have at feeling content in life was to pick one person to fuck and that was it. It might sound boring, but stress and emotional pain levels get slashed in half. When you have the mindset that you only have one chance to get it right, you become a lot more selective. Her father was crudely wise, but wise nevertheless.
Naturally, if he was in the habit of following his own advice, Marceline wouldn't even be here, but it had been very much a "do as I say, not do as I do" method of teaching.
Smart, funny and kind was the golden trifecta and a general enough answer. When it boiled down to it, everyone was looking for some version of that.
She had deliberately avoided physical attributes. Looks didn't have a substantial amount of importance for her. It was just that if she were to list her physical preferences, one might be able to come to an incorrect conclusion because her preferences all put together sort of sounded eerily familiar:
She liked light complexions and good skin. Hair color didn't matter much as long as the hair itself was clean and maintained, but if she had to pick, she preferred dark tones so that when they aged, they would get those pretty streaks of silver that were easier to see in dark hair. Eyes a pretty color was always attractive, but again, not something she would put a lot of stock into. She liked strong men, not with overtly large muscles, but certainly physiques with definition. They didn't have to be conventionally attractive, either, so long as they were attractive to her. It was surprising how some people could let how others perceive their partner impact how they themselves saw their partner. It wasn't much of a relationship if you were embarrassed by your partner's looks.
A picture was taking shape now, wasn't it?
"If that's all you look for, then why aren't you married? A guy like that can't be that hard to find," Jean asked again.
Marceline looked at him over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes. "I'll know him when I see him and let's leave it at that. Women have a keen intuition for these sort of things, you know."
That was utter nonsense, but she was beginning to chafe under all these personal questions.
He crossed his arms and looked at the ceiling contemplatively. "Smart, funny, and kind, eh? Do most girls like that sort of thing?"
"I suppose. I don't really get along with other women enough to know."
"Well, women don't go for idiots, losers, and jerks, do they?"
She shot him a look. "You'd be surprised. But to be fair, those women usually aren't prizes themselves, either."
"Well, you know, while you're waiting for Mr. Right, I'm always available if you ever want to play house." He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and grinned, but it dropped when she suddenly walked towards him in a confident stride.
She didn't stop until there was only a sliver of distance between them. Jean resisted the urge to take a step back. With her this close in proximity, he could smell her and feel her body heat nearly mixing with his. He swallowed with an audible gulp and looked down at the older woman who stared back at him unflinchingly. The freckles decorating the bridge of her nose were almost close enough to count.
She cupped his cheek in her hand and he blushed. "That's super sweet of you to say, but no." She punctuated her answer with a somewhat gentle slap to his cheek and then pinched his nose in between her pointer and middle finger before releasing him. "Now, back up before I dissolve you in acid."
"Acid won't solve all your problems," he grumbled, rubbing his cheek.
"It'll solve most of them," she argued matter-of-factly.
"You don't really get along with other people, do you?" Armin asked. "I mean, you know how to attract them, but you don't have a lot of interpersonal relationships."
"Yeah, and your head is shaped like a mushroom," came her eloquent rebuttal. He was right, of course, she didn't have a lot of interpersonal relationships. Multiple identities would do that. But she didn't appreciate being psychoanalyzed by an androgynous dandelion.
"Sorry," he apologized, "it's just something I noticed after seeing you arguing with Lieutenant Levi one time."
Marceline wanted to roll her eyes at the mentioning of him. If the young Scout was basing this observation on her interactions with that man alone, she was surprised that he hadn't accused her of being a crazy bag lady.
"The Lieutenant is an isolated case," she argued. "Not everybody you meet in life is going to like you."
"I know that, but wouldn't the world's strongest soldier be the kind of person you would want to like you?"
"Yeah," she gave a forlorn sigh, "he would be."
"I didn't even know that you guys didn't like each other," Armin admitted. "I figured since Hange had that pool going..."
She looked at him, cocking an eyebrow. "What pool?"
He looked down at his hands and blushed. "The pool for how long it'll be until you guys…you know."
For Christ's sake, Hange. Marceline pinched the bridge of her nose. It was one thing for Hange to tease her in private, but to indoctrinate others was ridiculous. It was so nice that someone was finding amusement in her torment. Who had wagered, what did they wager, and how much? Did she even really want to know? Probably not.
Jean laughed, "no way, seriously!? That's hilarious!"
"Workplace gossip, I promise you, and a nice laugh at my expense," she assured them. "How did you even hear about that?"
She stared at the blonde, but he only shrugged his shoulders.
"Hey, check this out," Jean said, pointing at an article in the paper and reading out loud: 'last week at the annual Mitras Art Museum Gala, top district fashion designer, Davey Kitz, stunned attendees and sparked controversy district-wide after debuting his new winter collection of men's coats that is said to be a statement of anti-military police by modeling it after the Scout Regiment insignia'. That's kind of crazy."
Marceline couldn't help but smile fondly at that. It was nice to hear that her old friend was still making headlines. Stoking the flames of civil unrest for a lark. She was glad she could still check up on him, albeit indirectly. Her friendship with the designer had been the only one she had mourned when she had killed off Sally and left the inner wall.
"Davey loves making outrageous statements," she told them. "It's actually not uncommon in the interior for groups or individuals to do things like that to drum up publicity or in protest over something, like that fringe group a couple years back who painted murals all over Ehrmich District of Darius Zackly with his dick out in protest over his 845 ruling of MP toll roads. I doubt Davey's ever even met a Scout member before, but he always said that he liked men in uniforms. I wonder what his new coats look like."
Jean lowered the newspaper and raised an eyebrow. "Do people really care that much about fashion in the interior?"
"Oh yes, fashion has its own language in Mitras," she smiled brightly. "Some think higher society only cares about showing off how much money they have by wearing the most flamboyant and gaudy things they can find. Since people have the money to afford more elaborate clothing, practically falls to the wayside in favor of self-expression. People can tell you a lot about what they're thinking depending on how they present themselves in certain situations. For example, if you show up to the house of that friend you don't actually like for a lunch date wearing your morning corset and tea gown, you're letting everybody know you would much rather be at home on the couch reading gossip rags than listen to how little Timmy is reading at a much higher level than all the other children in his class, and how you're internally hoping that he crashes and burns just because his mother is a horribly arrogant woman - this isn't a true story by the way," Marceline caught herself going off on a tangent and reeled it back in.
"Huh," Jean remarked, tonguing the inside of his cheek. Not that he was one to pass judgement. Updating his wardrobe had been one of the first things he had planned to do back when he had his eye on the Military Police.
"You know him?" Armin asked. "The fashion designer?"
"Yes, I do, he was one of the few friends I had in Mitras. I used to make dyes and paints for him in exchange for clothing. He's an eccentric, but a lovely person."
"What's it like living in Mitras?" Jean asked. "I wouldn't know because - well, I'm here."
"Crowded," she answered. "Everybody is always in each other's business. I'd much rather be out here in the country, even if it's crawling with disgusting birds."
"You don't like birds?" Armin asked, the corner of his mouth turning up in amusement.
"What's not to like?" she replied, blatantly sarcastic. "They shit everywhere and can transmit diseases to humans. I fucking love birds."
Armin blinked at her sudden colorful change in vocabulary, but didn't comment on it.
The two cadets only stayed a little while longer before the chemist was shooing them out of the lab, then she set about cleaning up the equipment from their experiments, putting the piranha solution back into her locked cabinet and tossing out the last of the sausages. She made sure to double bag them because they were going to spoil fast and the smell would be horrendous.
With nothing more pressing to do, she worked on her notes for her toxin, going over what she had already established about a dozen times in attempt to yield something new, but it was fruitless. Her research had come to a complete standstill. It was frustrating because she had everything already meticulously planned out and ready to go, the only thing was missing was her specimen. It would've been better if she were able to obtain it herself, but that wasn't an option since the natural habitat of the species was well out of her reach. It was also well out of Commander Erwin's reach as well, which was truly saying something; otherwise, she would've gone to him for help.
The snake she planned to use for her titan poison was the Wasteland Rattlesnake, and it could only be found in her home district, outside Wall Rose.
It wasn't on any known zoology record because, well, the Steppe Wasteland wasn't on record, and even if it were, nobody could study it without being exiled, but Marceline knew it to be the deadliest snake within the walls, even deadlier than the Dauper Boomslang, which held the the title officially.
The Boomslang's venom was primarily a hemotoxin that disrupted the blood's coagulation process, hence how one bite from it caused people to bleed out of every orifice, as well as caused hemorrhaging in the brain and muscles, leading to a painful death. However, fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending on how one handled the situation) the venom was slow-acting. It could take anywhere between twenty-four to forty-eight hours for the more serious symptoms to manifest, which was plenty of time to make a victim comfortable before they died - because they would die, sad to say. There was no anti-venom for it yet. On the other hand, the slow manifestation of symptoms could cause a victim to assume that it had been a dry bite or that it wasn't lethal. There'd be no easing the way for them then once the venom was in full effect.
Marceline had a syringe of the stuff in her on-the-go, goodies kit and it was the only one she had never used. It was more of a deterrent than anything, a way to make someone shit their pants and leave her alone. It didn't have much use in combat since it was slow-acting. It was also too extreme to really use as a defensive maneuver. If she ever used it, it would have to be under circumstances in which she wanted to make someone truly suffer, and she had yet to reach the required levels of vindictiveness. It might prove to be an effective tool for interrogation, since she doubted there was anybody alive who wouldn't immediately crack once blood started oozing from their eyes and ears.
In any case, a slow-acting venom surely wouldn't have much effect given a titan's ability to regenerate. It would neutralize the toxin in a matter of seconds, probably. They could still try it, just to see what would happen, but that would be up to Hange. Marceline wasn't keen on testing every single type of venomous snake on record. That would be tedious.
Two other types of venom were neurotoxins and cytotoxins, both of which could be found in the oh-so friendly Jinae King Cobra. This venom attacked the human nervous system, causing symptoms such as severe pain, vertigo, drowsiness and paralysis. Particularly nasty bites result in cardiovascular collapse that lead to the victim falling into a coma, followed by death due to respiratory failure. The cobra's venom was more merciful than the Boomslang's given that the victim wasn't conscious or aware of anything once they slipped into a coma. Moreover, a cobra won't always deliver bites with a lethal amount of venom, but when it did, it was fast-acting, requiring only thirty minutes to kill a person. It was easy to see why Marco was so terrified of them.
This type of venom was the next best option for her titan poison, not only for its rapid effects, but also because it contained neurotoxins. A paralysis agent had been her initial proposal. Perhaps there wasn't a venom out there strong enough to kill or permanently damage a titan, but if there was one that could temporarily stop one in its tracks, it could save lives and insure easier kills.
What made the Wasteland Rattlesnake deadlier than all others was that it had a witch's brew of toxins in its venom. Primarily a neurotoxin but also a very potent necrotoxin that destroyed tissue cells at a rapid rate. It also had trappings of hemotoxins, which essentially made it a cross between a cobra and a boomslang. A team up of nightmares.
Sometimes Marceline could be overzealous when saying a certain poison or toxin had the ability to liquify someone's insides, but this rattlesnake could really liquify someone's insides. She had seen the corpse of a Wasteland Rattler once, when she was a teenager, and it hadn't been pretty. It looked like all of his blood cells had exploded and then rapidly rotted, leaving his body covered in blue and black veins and eyes with red where it should've been white. His body had seized up in disturbing ways and the site of the bite had swelled up to the size of a kick ball. It had taken him only ten minutes to die. A blessing, really.
Its versatility made using it for her titan poison the most ideal. It was something that could attack an organism on all fronts. If the venom could properly affect just one system in a titan, then it might be able to do actual damage. However, whether a titan's regenerative abilities could neutralize a fast-acting toxin just as easily as it could a slow-acting one...well, baby steps. They weren't looking for a weapon of mass destruction after all.
Trying to catch one was, decidedly, detrimental to one's health. With enough incentive, her smugglers could get it; a couple of beatniks who spent their down time getting high and tormenting MP's. There wasn't an animal or object within the walls that they couldn't get their hands on. They had been the go-to smugglers for the Wasteland long before Maria fell. It would be the ultimate challenge to see if they could find a way back to their old stomping ground.
It wasn't unheard of for smugglers to dig tunnels that went underneath the walls to bypass going through the checkpoint at the main gates, and there was no doubt that even more tunnels were dug after Maria fell. Contraband from within Wall Maria were practically relics now and were worth a fortune, especially the further out from Wall Rose it came from. People tended to want things that they knew they couldn't have and that went doubly for the rich. It didn't matter if it was a piece of jewelry crafted by the most famous jeweler in all of Wall Maria, or if was a bent fork taken from a house in Shiganshina. If it had the allure of being impossible to obtain, the rich wouldn't hesitate in pursuing it just to prove they could.
Most smugglers weren't participating in that particular area of the market, though, for obvious reasons. However, Marceline was confident in assuming that her boys had been outside Wall Rose. How far out, she had no idea. She also didn't know how smugglers managed to come back alive. Most didn't, and the ones that did, guarded their secrets closely. Understandable; if the Garrison caught wind of their operations, they would have the tunnels sealed.
Fortunately, Marceline hadn't been completely idle while waiting for a response.
It wasn't exactly a part of her agreement with Erwin, who had only commissioned the toxin, but she had brainstormed several ideas for different tools and gadgets that might be worth putting consideration into if everything went well with her toxin. She didn't see why she should be limited to just the Scout Regiment. Erwin had said that Commander Pixis was just as unconventional as he was. Maybe not a titan poison, but perhaps acidic and incendiary boobytraps set up along the outside of the Walls to add to its defenses? Or they could be handheld devices that could be taken on expeditions. This little loophole that Erwin had found to allow scientific innovation without as many government restrictions could bring about dozens of opportunities.
She was careful not to get ahead of herself, though. They were just ideas. Musings, rather. The more lofty ones, at least.
What ideas she could devote time and resources to were small things, like a new bug repellant and weather-resistant firestarters for expeditions to make them just a little more bearable. She also used her extensive knowledge of the outdoors to draw up a list of easy recipes that could be replicated with herbs and spices found in different areas of Wall Maria. Bread and beans could only take a person so far. And would it be ridiculous to propose field chemistry kits? Nothing extreme, just a small collection with instructions on how to mix basic compounds like hydrogen chloride for wounds and cleaning surfaces for impromptu surgery, how to create exothermic reactions that could serve as distress signals or distractions. Knowing how to make charcoal would also be handy for water purification.
The medics and demolition squad would have everything the Scouts would need for an expedition, but what if someone got left behind? Everybody knew that being caught outside the walls without a horse or ODM gear was basically a death sentence, but what if someone could find shelter and hunker down somewhere the titans couldn't reach until another expedition rolled around? Knowing how to build resources from scratch instead of relying on nature to produce the finished product could make all the difference.
Marceline knew a lot about the outdoors and survival in the bushwhack. More than what people would expect someone from Mitras to know, or what the interior could even provide, so she did her best to keep it on the down low.
She knew many things and had skills that schools in Wall Sina wouldn't even teach their young men, let only their young ladies. Her dad taught her everything she needed to know on survival.
Every summer, throughout her childhood, Marceline would accompany her dad on his shifts as a firewatcher in the Steppe forest. Naturally, standing around in a watchtower waiting for the forest to catch fire for weeks on end came with a considerable amount of downtime. Looking at her now, you wouldn't believe that she had been quite the little wilding as a child.
She would also study the fauna in the plains of the Wasteland, and had learned a great deal from the Herb Brides of Aspity: the closest thing the Wasteland had to witchy women, who were basically women well-versed in herbalism and botany and holistic treatments. They were generally seen as an eccentric, dance-around-a-fire-naked-during-a-full-moon type of weird, which was why Marceline had been so keen to talk and learn from them as a child. They had been keen on her as well, because her birthday fell on October 31st, and that had appealed to them for some reason? Something about the veil between light and dark, life and death, being particularly thin on that day. Who really knew with those types.
Marceline was just finishing up the last of her notes for that day when Hange came stomping into the lab, pouting like a petulant child. Without acknowledging the other person in the room, the squad leader began going through cabinets and drawers, opening them harshly, causing the contents to rattle, and then slamming them shut again. Not to locate a particular object, but to keep herself from launching the nearest piece of furniture out of the window. Marceline watched and listened to her grumble under her breath.
"I take it you're not hear to deliver the good news?" she inferred as she closed her notebook.
Hange whipped around. "I don't get it, what the hell is his problem?"
"I've been asking that for months now," the chemist replied with little sympathy for her friend's predicament.
"Ugh, this is so stupid! Did he honestly expect there to be no accidents once Sawney and Bean were captured? That everything would be hunky dory? This is what science is all about! There can be no scientific progression without sacrifice! He said I could pick one experiment to do. One! The information that would come from only one experiment will be nothing but table scraps!"
Hange really didn't need to tell Marceline this, she was already well aware, but she allowed herself to be a soundboard for the squad leader's frustrations. The stools in the lab were falling to pieces enough as they were.
Hange's expression suddenly did an one-eighty switch to sugary sweet and pleading. She looked at the chemist with big eyes and her hands clasped together in a prayer. "Hey Marcy, you'll help, right? Lay on that charm of yours?"
"If you couldn't convince him, I doubt that I could," she replied, "but then again, for once it isn't me in the doghouse."
Was this what it felt like to not be public enemy number one? It was nice.
Regardless, she could crawl on her hands and knees and beg the Lieutenant to reconsider, it wouldn't make a lick of difference. If Hange couldn't convince him to lighten his stance on their experiments, then they were pretty much up the creek.
However, she would be remiss if she didn't try. After all, if she could forgive Hange for nearly getting her killed, then that was one less reason for the Lieutenant to reject their proposals. Not that he actually cared what she thought of the incident, but at least by taking herself out of the equation, she wouldn't feel like a child stuck in between two quarreling parents. She might not be fit for combat, but she had proved that she was quick and resourceful enough to get herself out of harm's way.
"I'll see what I can do," she relented with a sigh.
~O~
Marceline made her way through the headquarters with a destination already in mind. When she entered the sought out hall, she smiled at Moblit as he exited the men's shower room, looking like a freshly polished coin.
"Hey, Moblit," she greeted him. She pointed at the door. "Is the Lieutenant in there?"
"Yeah, he is," he replied, his honey blonde hair still slightly damp. "Do you want me to pass on a message for you?"
"No thanks," she said before entering the men's shower room, letting the door swing shut on Moblit's flabbergasted expression.
Once inside, she was hit with a wall of steam that obscured her vision and made her clothing cling uncomfortably to her skin. The shower room was fairly occupied and had that male funk smell despite the soap and water. She couldn't see them, but she could hear echoes of laughter coming from within the steam, frivolous taunting and general guy camaraderie.
Mindful of the wet floor beneath her boots, she marched forward confidently, unbothered by the naked men. The front of the shower room wasn't as populated, so her presence went unnoticed at first, but the deeper she went, she received double takes and bewildered expressions as she passed by.
She kept her eyes above waist level. Sculpted chests and backs were all well and good; long years of ODM usage shaping even the lowest performing bodies into peak human fitness, truly a far cry from the gangly-almost gaunt young men with smooth palms and blanch complexions from hours spent in a library, and the portly middle-aged professors who dominated her university days, but she really didn't need a barrage of waterlogged ding-dongs and awkward tan-lined behinds haunting her nightmares. And the hair.
At least she didn't have to feel self-conscious like she did in the women's shower room, where they had everything that she had except better. Every female had more than just a hint of definition in their limbs and stomachs. Some even having full, rock solid abs. Even little Christa had some semblance of dips and ridges decorating her lower stomach. Marceline was in no way fat, but she wasn't exactly "in shape", either. She had alluring curves; a small waist and an ample chest, the epitome of soft and feminine, but when you were surrounded by a certain standard that you did not meet, you tend to feel inadequate. "Soft" became "flabby" real fast.
In one row of shower heads, Gunther and Eld tried their best to wash up and get out. The fancy soap that Oluo spent a good chunk of his paycheck on was particularly pungent, especially when he insisted on using so much of it at one time. His incessant talking was also unbearable and the other sounds in the shower room did little to drown him out.
"I'm just saying, imagine how much water the headquarters would save if we had a co-ed shower room?" the elite Scout hummed, using a loofah to scrub under his arms, a polka dot shower cap covering his hair.
"Like any woman is going to take her clothes off in front of you," Eld said, dipping his head back under the spray of the shower head.
"Not to mention that they'll have to bare the sight of your patchy chest hair and pimply ass like we do," Gunther added.
"Are you kidding me?" Oluo boasted. "Any lady who sees these guns would be falling all over themselves!" He lifted his arms and flexed, squeezing his loofah in his hand, trails of suds streaming down his forearm.
"Nobody likes a fibber, Oluo," Marceline chided almost motherly as she passed by their row.
Oluo whipped around, catching a glimpse of the female, and let out a high-pitched yelp, dropping his bar of soap and loofah to cover his bottom half with his hands.
An uproar of shock and protest and excited clamor filled the air among the running water and ancient pipes. The chemist ignored the shouts and the whistles and cat calls as she moved through the shower room, her eyes scanning the rows and stalls for a shock of raven hair.
Levi could hear the commotion even from where he was in the furthest recesses of the men's shower room.
He always demanded to have at least a good quarter of the shower rows to himself, and the others were all too willing to get the fuck out of his way. He stood over a basin of water, cupping the back of his head to keep the long strands of his undercut away from the path of the razor blade in his other hand as he shaved the shorter hairs along the base of his neck. He didn't stop the slow drag of the blade, knowing from the dainty sound of heels tip-tapping in his direction what had caused the uproar.
Why were the women in his life so pushy? Next, he'd have Petra standing outside the latrines while he took a shit.
He continued to shave his head even when her figure finally rounded the corner and she let out a chipper "oh, there you are!", which he responded to with a primitive grunt.
"And you're not busy, good," she added as he dunk the razor into the basin to wash off the shaving cream and little hairs from it. She could see his reflection in the mirror from where she stood just as he could see her, floating over his right shoulder, but he didn't take his eyes off his task.
Marceline felt tickled for some reason to discover that the Lieutenant cut his own hair. She shouldn't have expected anything different; the uptight man would never allow someone to get so close to him with a blade. If he ever needed surgery for anything, he would probably insist he did it himself.
He didn't move to put a shirt on despite there being a clean one resting on the counter next to him. He only continued to glare at himself in the mirror. That was fine with her; it gave her the chance to observe him without him getting snippy. There was a whole plethora of exposed alabaster skin that was usually covered by his uniform for her to catalogue. Marceline somewhat tried to keep her eyes from wandering to respect his privacy - a funny thought given where she had just barged into - but she was a curious person by nature, so she never denied herself the opportunity to learn about what was typically hidden to her. Besides, it wasn't a lecherous eye that she studied him with. More of a clinical, slightly appraisal, one.
For science, she decided, would be the reason if he called her out on it. Firm and handsome science.
His less than average height didn't take away from the attractiveness of his physique. If anything, his compactness only highlighted it. The Survey Corps uniform did him a disservice hiding the sheer definition that was his torso. His body was just as angular as his facial features, all sharp lines and edges with little obscurity. His back was decorated with scars of varying ages, some healed over with a hint of pink, others faint white lines of new, shiny skin. Her eyes traced the ridges that was his spine down and along the subtle curve of his lower back where a pair of loose, black pants covered the rest of his body. His shoulder blades poked out from underneath his skin almost shockingly, like trapped wings, and shifted with every move he made.
She grabbed the front of her shirt to peel it from where it clung to her skin and let some only slightly less humid air flow through the material.
"If you're here to try to succeed where Four-eyes had failed, you're piss out of luck," he finally spoke. "Go away."
Emboldened, she put a hand on her hip, smirking. "Do you have to be so difficult all the time? I promise I won't tell anybody if you go just a teensy bit easy on us."
"And miss the opportunity to ruin you day?" he replied, dunking the blade once more. "Again, piss out of luck."
"You can't sabotage Hange's entire project just because someone almost got killed," she said, sparing them both and getting to the crux of the matter.
"I can't?" he challenged, cocking an eyebrow.
"You shouldn't," she rephrased.
He looked at her through the mirror. "You're taking this surprisingly well considering that 'someone' was you."
"I accepted the risks," she said resolutely.
"Doesn't matter. If you die due to your association with Erwin and the Corps, this regiment is finished," he reiterated what he had told Hange. "Your corpse is one that people will actually give any attention to."
"Oh, well, I'm relieved you have my best interest at heart," she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Whether you like it or not, I still have agency, so stop acting like an overbearing husband and let us do our jobs."
He scoffed at his reflection. "Like anybody would marry you."
"I was able to free myself from Bean," she reminded him before adding with a hint of vindictiveness: "without any help."
She would've thought that this would be the one time where the Lieutenant had no choice to give her at least some credit for something, but she still expected too much from the man. "You got lucky," he said, his tone void of any commendation, "and even if you hadn't, I would've gotten to you in time."
"I wasn't willing to take that bet," she told him. "I'm able to take care of myself, I've been doing it for years, so back off and let us do our jobs. Let me do what Erwin is paying me to do. This is more important than you personal vendetta against me."
"Not everything is about you." His voice was muffled by a towel as he used it to wiped his face.
"Oh, so this has absolutely nothing to do with me?" she asked, highly dubious, her hands on her hips. "There's absolutely no part of you who is doing this just to see me struggle?"
"Nope."
"Not even subconsciously?"
"My subconscious says no."
The chemist let out dispirited sigh. "I told Hange you wouldn't understand."
From his view of her in the mirror, Levi saw her shake her head as if she was truly disappointed in him and it made him want to chuck something at her. Didn't his disappointment in this whole thing matter at all to these women? Moreover, what gave her the right to say that to him? She should know by now to expect the absolute bare minimum from him. It pissed him off, he didn't need to do shit for her. Yet, time after time, he felt the need to explain himself or lash out when he would've just ignored anybody else.
"Go back to painting your nails blue and leave me alone," he snapped at her.
"Wrong!" she contradicted, holding up her hand and showing off her nails. "My nails are a slate grey and cloud grey ombré today."
"Whatever." He rolled his eyes as he turned away from the mirror and walked over to one of the shower heads and turned it on. A stream of clean water jetted out in spite of the ancient plumbing with a decent amount of pressure. Of course, he would know which shower was the best. "Get out before I tell everyone how much of a filthy pervert you are."
She wanted to respond, but he was already undoing the bindings of his pants, intent on stripping down whether she was there or not. The article of clothing slipped off his hips as they loosened, revealing a dark trail of neatly groomed hair under his navel leading down.
Not mentally prepared enough to see it, she turned around to leave, but Levi called out behind her.
"I would've gotten to you in time," he repeated, his tone still flat, but holding a hint of persistence. A statement of fact.
Not knowing how to respond to that, Marceline left without another word.
AN: Hope you enjoyed the new chapter. Let me know your thoughts in a review!