The underground city had never been a peaceful place. Gangs battled each other openly in the streets, fighting over territory, drugs or to settle petty grudges and insults.
The back alleys were filled with the dead and the dying, the bodies of both were stepped over by drug addicts and dealers on their way to the next fix without a second glance.
Walking down any street in the city and you could find cultist priests, preaching of doom and lambasting sin on one corner and the crowd of prostitutes on another; both trying to drown out the other with their words and offers of either a night of comfort or a lifetime of absolution for their wickedness.
The few MPs stationed in the city who weren't part of the interior squad, were so utterly corrupt and lazy that the residents often said you could murder someone in cold blood right in front of an MP and they wouldn't bat an eye as long you slipped them a handful of coins.
Many claimed to have seen such a thing happen; some even boasted of doing it.
The fact the entire city seemed to be frozen in an eerie silence that felt so wholly alien and wrong was a testament to the collective shock that the sudden appearances of a Titan had on the city. But when the Titan roared, its deep bellowing cry which echoed like a thunderstorm, the city roared back.
Not in anger, or in fear. But in absolute, soul-rending terror.
In an instant, the streets closest to the monster were turned into a writhing mass of humanity, everyone trying to flee to whatever safety they could find. People were knocked to the ground and trampled under the weight of hundreds of feet stamping over them.
Children were separated from their parents, pushed aside by the frenzied mob, and hide in filthy alleys, alone and afraid.
The terrified screaming grew louder as the ground started to shake.
The Titan had started to move.
Petra had never seen Eren's full titan form with her own eyes, even during the weeks leading up to the doomed expedition. The one time he had been authorised to do a total transformation she'd had been called away by the Commander, missing the spectacle.
She had seen several partial transformations before, both accidental and purposeful; a brilliant flash of light and billowing smoke which eventually cleared to reveal a boy, half-submerged in a mass of steaming meat. Sometimes the mass had an arm or a leg, once it even had a half-formed skull. But nothing could have prepared her for the full thing.
The flash was so intense that it stung her eyes, and even when she squeezed them shut, the light was still bright enough to hurt. The once still and stale air of the underground was violently whipped around, nearly blowing her away, as muscle fibres and bones appeared from nowhere and started to take form.
While she still couldn't see through the blinding yellowish light, Petra could feel Rod trying to break free, but she held him firm even as the knife was ripped from her hand by the force of the wind. He didn't struggle for long as something hot and heavy scooped them off the ground and into the air.
It was a hand… a Titan's hand.
Craning her head upwards, and blinking away the red splodges in her vision, Petra caught a brief glimpse of Eren's face, before the fingers close around her creating a warm, fleshly bunker to protect her from Kenny and his troops. The face was bestial and inhuman with exposed, razor-sharp teeth, elongated ears and glowing green eyes. It was horrifying, and it should have terrified her.
Petra wasn't sure if it's that thought which causes her to burst out laughing or if she had just started to lose her mind in the cell; but either way, she starts snickering like a madwoman, even as Rod screams and cries in fear.
Ever since she'd joined the military, she had feared and hated titans, those monstrous foes who kill and devour people without remorse. She couldn't even count the number of times she had woken up in the dead of night, drenched in sweat and shaking from nightmares of being caught, trapped, in a titan's hand or mouth.
But now, after days of endless torture and pain, this small enclosure between a Titan's hand and chest felt like the safest place on earth.
Petra could feel Eren starting to move, the muscles in his chest rippling under the skin as he broke into a sprint. With no real handholds available in his cupped hand, Petra was jostled and bounced around, she tried to steady with her legs against the fingers when she realised there was a weight around them.
Looking down, she saw Reiss clinging to her legs, sobbing and muttering two names over and over again. Petra didn't know who Uri or Frieda was or why Reiss was calling for them, if it was significant, they could find out once the corp had him.
"Get off me!" she hissed at the man feeling her skin crawling at his touch.
Shaking off Rod's desperate grip, and not giving a fuck about his discomfort after everything he had put her and Eren through, Petra kicked Reiss down and stood on top of him so she could peer out in between the gaps of Eren's fingers. She wanted to do something to help Eren, even if it was only looking out for him.
Although the large digits were limiting her field of view, Petra had a commanding view of the city. She could make out most of the main avenues and winding streets, all of them choked with people, as well as the towering pillars of rock. But she couldn't see the exit Kenny was talking about if it even existed.
Cursing this whole situation, Petra racked her brain, trying to think of something else. If they couldn't escape right now, they needed to find somewhere were Eren had the advantage in a fight. But where? If they approached the side of the cave, they'd have nowhere else to run, their backs would literally be up against the wall. And if they stayed here in the denser urban areas, facing competent 3DMG users, they would be easy pickings.
But then she saw it, the glistening reflections of the cave crystals catching her eyes.
Across the city, snaking its way through the heart of the metropolis, was an underground stream. While numerous bridges were spanning the river, the embankments and beyond were devoid of any large structures, leaving a strip of relatively open ground. That might be the only place in the city where their pursuer's 3DMG wouldn't be effective.
It wasn't perfect, but it was better than nothing.
"EREN!" she yelled out, hoping he could hear her through the chaos. "THE RIVER! GO TO THE RIVER!"
A low rumbling noise escaped Eren's mouth as he abruptly changed direction, making a sharp turn, and knocking Petra from her perch. This time she was just about able to suppress the mad giggles. She had just ordered a 15m Titan to do something, and it listened to her.
'Hanji would really love this.' She thought, letting out a shaking breath.
"Eren! The river! Go to the river!" Eren could just about hear Petra's voice over the hundreds of different noises bombarding his heightened senses; screaming, shouting, the escaping gas of their pursuer's strange 3DM gear, all of it echoing off the cave waves and assaulting him for every angle.
This was only the third time Eren had fully shifted into a Titan, and only his second time consciously doing so, but he felt strangely in control. He didn't feel the animalistic urge for blood he felt in Trost, or his nervous reluctance when he transformed in front of Captain Levi and Hanji. This time he felt confident and prepared as if he had shifted countless times before…
Out of the corner of his eye, over the roofs of the buildings lining the street, he saw it. The stream didn't look like the best place to head towards, but after everything they had endured together, he trusted Petra almost as much as he did Armin or Mikasa.
He let out a low grumble, acknowledging her words, and made a sharp turn, leaping over one of the small shanty houses and landing on the road heading directly towards the river. While his sudden turn and jump had caused some of the pursuers to overshoot and have to turn back, they quickly caught back up to him.
A continuous thunder of shots poured in Eren's general direction, but humanity learnt long ago that any projectile smaller than a cannonball was useless against a Titan, and it continued to be so now. Eren kept running, sidestepping or leaping over crowds of frantic civilians, feeling the faint prickling sensations all over his body where the shells hit him.
Most of the bullets bounce off his thick leathery skin and tumble to the ground like metal hailstones. The few shots that penetrate his skin were fired at nearly point-blank range, the white-hot bullets sinking less than an inch into him, before being pushed out again by the flesh stitching itself together. While this did little to slow Eren down, it did bring the shooters within reach, which Eren is quick to capitalise on.
His free hand snapped out, slapping aside one of the shooters who had gotten to close with as much force as he could muster. There was a deafening crunch as the man's broken body was sent flying across the street and smashed through a brick wall.
Eren lets out a victorious roar at the kill. It felt good to finally punish some of these monsters for their barbarism and cruelty, to give them a taste of the same helplessness Petra and himself had felt, wasting away in the bowls of that dark cell. Kenny had fucked up but letting him out, whatever his plan was it wouldn't happen now. They couldn't do a damn thing to stop him now.
Seeing their comrade being turned into a bloody paste caused many of the interior squad to hesitate and hang back, unsure of how to deal with this new threat. Since joining the secretive arm of the military police, they had exclusively trained with anti-personal equipment and tactics. Only a handful of them had even seen a titan before, let alone fight one.
Swinging into the midst of his soldiers, Kenny immediately demanded to know why they weren't advancing.
"Our guns are useless against that thing, Captain. And he just took out Duran." One of them answered, beads of nervous sweat rolling down his forehead. Whether his nerves was from facing the Titan or Kenny was anyone's guess.
"I see…" Kenny narrowed his eyes at Eren's sprinting form, assessing the situation. Moments later, the corners of his lips twitched upwards.
"Oi, Boomen!" Kenny called out, directing his voice to an unusually gangly man who was silently following behind him. Half the man's face was horribly scarred, with red puckered skin creeping up his throat, over his left eye and missing ear, before wrapping around to the back of his bald head.
The man didn't answer, his vocal cords were charred to uselessness in the same accident which ruined his face, but he did smirk at his Captain, already knowing what he was going to ask, and eager to comply.
"Time to break out your new toys."
Boomen reached down to one of the numerous bandoliers crisscrossing his chest and unclipped it, quickly passing it around the pursuing squad so everyone could take one of his newest creations, with only a modest amount of trepidation.
It was time the scout's pet Titan was introduced to some new technology.
When Eren was a child, he had very few real worries. Most of his day consisted of doing chores for his mother and father and hanging out with Armin and Mikasa, but there was a time before he had met either of them when he had no real friends.
During those times he spent most of his dates watching the soldiers. While Armin's book about the outside world hadn't inspired his desire to be free of the walls and join the Survey corp at that age, he was still fascinated by the ideals of being a soldier. To serve and protect humanity.
But the Shiganshina soldiery didn't match up to Eren's perceptions about them. They were not brave and heroic, charging valiantly forward to do battle with mankind's foes, but instead sat around all day, drinking and gambling.
Eren didn't like it one bit, so one day he decided to change it. At the tender age of 7, Eren marched straight up to the only Garrison soldier he knew by name, who was slumped over a table with a nearly empty bottle in hand and kicked him in the shin.
Hannes shot up, spitting out curses as he jumped around. The other soldiers, woken up by this, roared in laughter.
"Stop being so lazy!" Eren shouted with all the force his young voice could muster. "You're a soldier, so go do soldier stuff!" he pointed at 'uncle' Hannes, as the drunkard occasional referred to himself as, then in the general direction of the outer gate.
"Damn it Eren, you don't kick a sleeping man, it's bad luck ya' know." Hannes had stopped jumping and rubbed at his painful shin. "Anyway, I'll have you know we are doing 'soldier stuff'. We are maintaining order and security in the district by keeping watch here in the market square."
"You were asleep!" Eren cried with indignation, "Someone could have stolen something off Mr Clavis's stall, and you wouldn't have seen it."
"Ah but they didn't, because we were here to deter them." Hannes confidently replied, flashing Eren a brilliant smile as if he had just answered the question of life.
Eren felt like screaming. "That's stupid! You didn't do anything. But when I grow up, I'm going to become a soldier and show you lot how a real soldier behaves. I'll be the best soldier ever!"
As Eren ranted at the men, Hannes had returned to his seat and picked up the fallen bottle bringing it to his lips. Once he had finished off the bottle, and Eren's had stopped shouting, he turned to face the boy and gave him a small pat on the head.
"I'm sure you will be, son. Just remember though that pride comes before a fall, and if you fall out there…" He cocked his head toward the wall and left the statement hanging. One of the other soldiers choose that moment to bite down on the sausage he was eating, allowing drips of grease and pigs blood to dribble down his chin.
"…exactly." Hannes finished darkly, shooting the other man a glare.
At the time Eren had dismissed Hannes saying, after all, what did that drunken layabout know about anything. But it was on that day that Eren swore to himself he would become a soldier, and he would be the best, just to prove Hannes wrong.
Perhaps it was for that reason Eren doesn't react when someone swings in front of him. He wasn't concerned by the flying pests anymore, none of Kenny's men had managed to harm him, so why would this person be any different. He may not be the best soldier yet, but he was far more unique, and there was nothing these scumbags could do to stop him now.
There is a moment of surprise when rather than pointlessly shooting at him like the others had, this person threw something at him. The object landed into the crook of his arm, held against his body to protect Petra and, unfortunately, Reiss as well.
Eren looks down at the object; regarding it with confusion. It was a long metal pipe, about a foot in length, with a large round bulge on the top which vaguely reminded Eren of a potato. Had it not been for the battle raging around him, Eren might have heard the faint hissing noise the object was emitting.
'What the…' Eren goes to shake the strange object free, but he was too late, for this hissing had just stopped.
Like a barrel of gunpowder, the stick exploded in a tremendous fireball, vaporising his elbow and sending fragments of hot metal deep into his Titan's body. Eren cried out in shock, his head ringing from the shockwave even when submerged in his Titan's nape.
Through his blurred double-vision and the deafening ringing in his ears, Eren saw his two charges falling, along with his severed forearm, titan blood spewing from the tattered meat where it used to be connected. Out of pure instinct, his remaining hand shot out, scooping up Petra and pulling her towards his chest.
But Reiss had already fallen out of reach and bounced off Eren's leg onto the ground. There was a loud snapping as his round body rolled into a dark alleyway and out of sight.
'Shit!' Eren looks back and hesitates; unsure whether he should go back for that insane bastard or keeping moving. All that knowledge Reiss had about Titans and his father, the corp needed it… He needed it. In the end, however, the choice is made for him as the man pulls another stick off his belt, pulls out a pin and tosses the thing towards him.
Whatever information Reiss would be meaningless if the pair of them were blown apart or recaptured trying to find him.
Breaking out into a sprint once more, Eren looks down at his remain hand as another explosion echoes from behind. Sprawled out in his palm Petra was struggling to keep herself steady in the shaking hand. She reached out, planning on wrapping her arms around his index finger for support, but Eren had another idea.
Without their hostage, they had nothing to bargain with, so the only way they were getting out of here alive was to fight against Kenny and win. And the only way Eren could do that if he had a free hand.
'Sorry about this Petra.' He let out a low chirping noise, the only way he could apologise for what he was about to do.
Petra looks up at the strange chirping noise, trying to interpret what Eren is saying. "E-Eren? What are you…" she trails off, staring up at the growing void that was his mouth.
Frozen stiff in Eren palm, Petra can feel herself being lifted up towards the opening maw, in a weirdly out of body experience. Everything feels like a strangely lucid dream, fuzzy and numb, as the rows of serrated teeth pull apart and a long slimy tongue rolls out towards her.
But as a glob of saliva falls from the dangling muscle onto her leg, slathering it in a thick, foul-smelling slime, she was forcefully snapped back into reality. Suddenly, Eren's hand no longer felt like the safest place on earth.
"Wait, wait, wait! ERRRREEEENNNN!" she let out a piercing shriek as Eren threw her into his mouth.
"Holy shit… did he just eat her?" Micha came to a halt on the rooftop, landing next to her old friend and watched the Titan throw the scout in its mouth before continuing its sprint past them.
Sam was just as shocked as her, his mouth agape and finger froze around the pistol's trigger. All of them in the interior squad knew about the two prisoners, and why they were keeping them together. They friends or at least squadmates, so the boy wouldn't transform if it put her in danger. But despite getting out of the cell and already transformed the boy just ate her.
Maybe he really was a Titan.
"I think…" Sam swallowed thickly, glancing at Micha out the corner of his eye. "I think starving him may have been a bad idea."
Even as Petra's screaming reverberated through his skull, and her fists ineffectively pounded against his teeth, Eren put his free hand to good use, curling it into a fist and slamming it against a wall, turning the person caught between it into a red stain on the weathered bricks.
He sprinted further into the city, his wild path towards the river unknowingly taking him to the central religious district of the underground city, where the wall cult's influence was strongest. Nearly a dozen churches circled a large decorative squad, each more massive and more grandiose than the one before; Towering spires, magnificent stained-glass windows and marble statues of saints with golden faces.
The whole district looked so out of place compared to the rest of the city, Eren wondered if he had been transported to another world entirely. This was the Wall Cult at their most powerful, and most decadent.
Hundreds of people had fled into these churches and barred the doors behind them, trusting in the cultist's offers of sanctuary either out of desperation or a genuine belief that some higher power would save them.
All of this meant nothing to Eren as his target was now in sight. The sounds of flowing water from the river could be clearly heard, and he could see the cleared expanses of the embankments just out of the square and over the next few rows of houses. Another minute and he would make it, then the advantage would be his again.
Unfortunately for the two scouts, Kenny had clocked on to their plan and intended to cut them off here. He and four of his men shot past Eren, using his body as an anchor for their hooks and slingshotting around him.
Each of them tossed a bundle of sticks, peppered the main junction from the square with bombs. All the air was forced from Eren's lungs, as the shockwave slammed into his massive body, forcing him backwards and causing his clawed feet to tear deep gorges into the ground.
Blinking away the flash of light, Eren witnesses the hellish inferno that had been created in his path and knew if he tried to run through that his skin and muscle would slough off his bones from the extreme heat.
'Damn it!' he cursed, feeling his anger, and a twinge of fear, bubbling up beneath his skin. Kenny was trying to slow him down so the others can catch up and overwhelm him, and it was working.
'Fine,' Eren grits his teeth, 'if you want to fight me here, Kenny, then let's go!'
His leg lashes out, kicking a giant stone statue of a woman holding a baby, and sending its broken pieces hurtling through the air towards the five foes. Three of the gang members were killed instantly; their bodies were torn apart by the stony barrage, as broken limbs and chunks of meat were scattered around the district.
The fourth died just as quickly as his compatriots, but far more violently. A smaller stone, no larger than a button, catches the gas canister attached to his back and punctures through the thick metal tube.
The proceeding explosion far surpassed all the other detonations felt in the underground that day, as the entire canister of highly pressurised gas erupted with enough force to shatter the windows of nearby buildings and shake plaster from the walls. The only evidence that a person had ever been attached to the canister was a single scorched boot that was launched across the city, never to be seen again.
But Kenny, moving faster than anyone Eren has ever seen; including Captain Levi and Mikasa, managed to altogether avoid the lethal volley by letting go of one of his guns, allowing himself to free fall under the mass of stones before using his remain gun to launch himself back up, only inches away from the ground.
For most users of 3DM gear only having one handle to control their movement would be incredibly challenging to operate successfully, but Kenny made it look natural. He fired his singular hook towards Eren, the sharp metal piercing his stomach, allowing Kenny to fly directly at him. Even as Eren goes to yank the hook out of him, Kenny beats him to it, retracting it only to refire it into Eren's thick hair.
Kenny flipped straight over Eren's head firing his pistol at the bestial face as he passed, blinding him in one eye and the bullets ruptured the jellied orb. Eren growled in frustration as Kenny once more slipped out of reach, wondering how this man could be so fast. Twisting around, so Kenny wasn't at his back, he caught a glimpse of the rapidly approaching gang, their numbers seemingly swelled to two dozen as more reinforcements must have joined the chase from their bunker complex.
Eren could hear Kenny laughing as he zipped around, a dark blur of motion as he flew around the increasingly frustrated Titan shifter. His arm shot out trying to grab Kenny, but it was like trying to swot an impossibly fast fly.
As his ire nearly boiled over entirely, Kenny landed right between his feet and shouted up at Eren, "Hey ugly! I'm down here!", quickly pulling the pins out of his last three sticks.
As Eren's foot lifted off the ground, he dropped all three and ran like hell, firing his 3DMG hook into the darkness and rocketing away. Bringing his foot crashing down were Kenny had been standing only moments ago, hoping to stomp the man flat, Eren wasn't rewarded with a scream and a crunch under his foot but with an explosion, atomising his foot and turning much of his lower leg into burnt, tattered stump.
Eren cried out as his vast body crashed down to earth, unable to stand with only one leg. He started to panic, wondering how he had been so fucking stupid to let Kenny bait him like that, and paralysed in indecision about what he can do now.
His other arm was still slowly healing, barely half his forearm had reformed, and now he was missing most of his right leg. He could scarcely fight and now couldn't even run, and to make everything even worse, the rest of the gang had finally caught up.
In short, both he and Petra were now completely and utterly fucked.
"Bring it down! BRING IT DOWN!" a female voice shouted out the order, pointing not at the wounded Titan, but at the church beside it.
Eren could only look on in horror out his remaining eye as a half dozen sticks were thrown, spinning over his head, and landed at the base of the building. As one all six sticks detonated, the massive explosion shattered the foundations of the church.
The building itself seemed to scream and screech as it started to collapse under its own weight, it's stone walls crumbling, and its towering spire snapped off as a single mass of stone and mortar and fell towards where Eren was sprawled out on the floor.
Kicking off the ground with his bloody stumps, Eren managed to get his upper torso clear of the falling tower but wasn't quick enough to save his lower half. His legs, hips and lower back were instantly crushed under the weight of the tower; his bones splintering and muscles rupturing like overripe fruit. Steam started to billow out around the broken masonry as his Titan body tried to heal from the catastrophic damage to its lower half.
The feeling of frustration and anger well up inside Eren as he tried to push himself up with his free hand and shake the wreckage off his back. The tree trunk thick arm shook like a twig under the weight of the rubble and quickly gives out, snapping in half as his upper body crashes back down, suffering yet more damage and now fully pinned and unable move.
'Shit… I can't move.' Eren silently despairs as the soldiers surrounded his fallen form. But worse was when Kenny, with that insufferable grin still plastered on his face, landed tauntingly close to him, well within arm's reach if he could move.
Pulling up his sleeve, Kenny looked down at a strange ticking device wrapped around his wrist and scoffed. "Seriously? Is that all you've got; not even 10 minutes and you're done? I'm guessing you don't have many lady friends with that performance, Yeager."
A handful of Kenny's soldiers chuckled or jeered at the joke, but most were silent; too nervous around the giant Titan or still winded after the short, but brutal, chase across the city.
"What happened to the infamous 'Rogue titan' who raged across Trost for hours? Don't tell me these lot," Kenny gestured to the troops surrounding Eren, "are more effective than hundreds of Titans?
Eren let out a low growl through his clenched teeth, causing Kenny to roll his eyes. "Very scary…"
Caven joined Kenny in front of Eren, coming to a halt beside her Captain and brushing off some of the dust debris from the broken church off her shirt. After cleaning herself, she leant over and whispered something in Kenny's ear.
"We'll pick him up once we're done here… It's not like he's going anyway." He answered with a shrug before regarding Eren once more.
"Well, Yeager, while that was kinda disappointing, you did give us an excellent opportunity to test our newest weapon. It's called a grenade, a throwable explosive. We designed them to deal with humans rather than titans, but it good to know it can work against them too."
"But play time's over now, so let's get you out of there. Sword?" he called out, lifting his arm into the air.
One of his soldiers drew out a standard-issue 3DMG sword and tossed it to Kenny from the roof. Without even looking, he caught the spinning blade by the handle and passed it over to Caven.
"I hope you haven't forgotten your anti-Titan training. Across the nape, right?"
Caven tried the sword's weight, giving it two lazy swings. "I may be a little rusty, but his limbs grow back if I miss."
Kenny laughed and clapped her on the back, "Atta girl, now go bring me a scout… two if the other one is still alive in there."
Caven moved forward, taking slow, deliberate steps towards him. Eren didn't know if Petra could see or hear through his teeth, but by the sudden stillness and quietness in his mouth, he suspected she knew what was coming.
"It'd be a lot easier, and far less painful if you just came out of there yourself." Caven taunted. "Don't make me climb up there, I might get tired and cut the wrong par-"
The words died on her lips as she came to a stop almost within touching distance of Eren. The sword which threatened to cut Eren out of his Titan slipped from her fingers. The whole world seemed to go still, and every sound faded away, except for the clattering of the blade against the stones.
"Caven?" Kenny asked, cocking his head to the side at his second in command strange behaviour.
She didn't answer, only swaying on her feet for a moment before collapsing to her knees and slumping onto her back, revealing to all what had caused her to fall.
Sticking out of her chest, piercing right through her heart, was an arrow.
"NOW!" A familiar commanding voice bellowed out from above.
Before the cry even finished, dozens of men and women burst out of the darkness from every direction. Some leapt through windows, or launched themselves up out of alleyways, taking the interior squad entirely by surprise and attacking them without hesitation.
Others dropped from above, having been dangling from the cave ceiling from their 3DMG, their swords already slicing through their respective target as they landed.
"THERE IS NO FUTURE FOR HUMANITY WITHOUT EREN, SECURE HIM AT ALL COSTS!" Erwin Smith roared, plunging his sword into his target's chest. All around him more scouts started to appear, the familiar sounds of 3DMG filled the air as one by one Kenny's soldiers were ambushed, throwing their formation into disarray.
Eren could see some of his friends fighting side by side in the battle; Jean, Connie, and Marco in the thick of the fighting killing with grim determination. All of them looked older than he remembered any sign of the youthful innocence that might have survived Trost had now been wiped away, leaving only three hardened warriors behind.
Above them, nestled in one of the church's bell towers was the archer who had taken out Caven, firing arrows with deadly precision. When the archer lowered her bow to notch another arrow, Eren recognised the girl's reddish-brown ponytail and knew instantly who it was. He could have recognised Sasha's signature hairstyle anywhere.
In a daze at the sudden turn about of their situation, Eren wondered when she had gotten so skilled with a bow as she effortlessly shot another retreating person out of the sky.
When he turned back towards the Commander, he had to choke back tears of relief as he saw the two people he loved the most; Armin and Mikasa cutting a bloody path straight towards him. When one of Kenny's men stumbled into Mikasa's path, clutching his wounded arm, she didn't hesitate in plunging her blade through his back.
When another soldier levelled his gun at Mikasa, wishing to avenge his comrade, Armin was on him in an instant, cutting the man's hand clean off causing the weapon to drop before slashing his sword across the man's chest, silencing his tormented wail.
Kenny's face quickly morphed from one of surprise from the ambush to one of anger as he watched his personally trained troops being cut down like fodder. He opened his mouth, ready to shout either orders or insults when he someone landed behind him, their swords already slashing at his head.
As if blessed with a sixth sense, Kenny narrowly avoided the fatal blow by dropping to a knee and spinning around to face his foe, brandishing a knife in the place of his abandoned pistol.
"Kenny," Captain Levi spat out, looming over the serial killer. "you're getting slow."
The Scouts had finally arrived for their missing comrades, and they weren't leaving without them.
Now isn't this exciting?
I bet you want to know what happens next?
Well too bad cause we're travelling back in time to find out what the others were up to before this rescue attempt :D