Armin Arlelt
"We don't know where he went either, sir."
"Alright, you kids stay safe."
The scout turned to remount his horse. He yanked the reins and smiled down at Armin. The perfect heroic pose.
Ruined as his horse took a dump right on the pavement. The soldier lost his bravado and scampered off before the MPs came round to enforce the silver coin per dump rule to punish violations of the King's roads.
Armin couldn't help laugh before it occurred to him to head in before the MPs came around to lay a fine on the nearest bystander.
Mikasa was sewing inside and her nose wrinkled up. They looked at each other and he couldn't hold the giggle while she smiled brightly.
The air was less tense the less they thought about Eren.
Or whoever that was.
He strolled to the storeroom airy as a feather, perusing through the supplies: corn, tomatoes, presumably barley flour in the roughspun sack... If only they had cheese. He avoided glancing at the wheat it brought back memories of Eren. The milk did likewise. Perhaps tomatoes...
"Armin."
Yes. Tomatoes would do nicely. The rye bread hadn't finished... surely enough for three. No. Four... No three. Grandpa, Mikasa and himself.
Where was the bread anyway?
He turned around directly into Mikasa. Without a word from her, he knew he'd spaced out.
"Sorry."
"It's fine. The Rye bread was taken by Grandpa to go fishing."
How did she-
"Have we had this conversation before?" He prodded.
" No." she assured him. "Your memory is fine. But it's obvious what you're looking for."
She glanced over his shoulder into the open store room.
"Eggs again?"
"Tomatoes actually." He was more than capable of cooking one meal over-
Tap Tap Tap.
Mikasa's mouth tightened into a hard line and he realized who was at the door: Eren.
He dusted his perfectly clean hands, straightened his jacket and tightened his fingers on the lapels. Then with Mikasa behind him he marched out of the store, past the dining table, through the living room and flung open the door.
"Look who showed up." He kept his voice as hard as Scout Levi's when they displeased the intimidating man. Eren looked abashed with his hands behind his back and opened his mouth to speak.
"Ah!" An egg sailed straight into his forehead, knocking off to fall onto the hard brick of the porch.
Armin blinked and winced when he realized that it was a Quail's egg that thumped into Eren's head, and blinked again when he noticed the baskets all around them.
"What's this?" He asked as all the fiery determination in his voice wilted away.
Eren held his tongue and the sharp smell of cheese wafted up from three large baskets. Oh no. Not cheese... Armin loved cheese.
"I guessed I had a large apology to make..."
"This isn't enough of a bribe to begin to cover what you said!" No matter how fond he was of cheese he certainly wasn't airheaded enough to drop his guard like that!
Eren muttered under his breath like a beaten pup and glanced over at Mikasa.
This time, it was a wooden cup and Eren made no attempt to dodge. It clunked into his exceptionally thick forehead, and he stumbled backwards with a hiss of pain.
"You can enter the house. We can't keep you out of your father's house Eren. But we haven't forgotten." Mikasa flatly declared and turned about. To such an excellent statement, Armin had nothing to add and yet as he scampered after her he left the door open. Eren would need to bring in all that magnificent cheese after all.
Mikasa joined Armin on the couch to watch Eren lug in his haul dispassionately, before he came to the front of them, ramrod-straight as a soldier on his first court martial.
"So?" They prompted
"So…. I'm sorry for what I said." He craned his neck nervously and shuffled on the spot.
"Being a titan is doing things to me. Things I don't want but can't stop. I really…"
Aw. It must be hard.
Armin felt for him. Of course awesome powers came with drawbacks. Bad enough that he would die soon enough but to lose his mind with that too?
"We get it but-"
"Eren you've always lacked control, and even if we forgive you this time…" Mikasa said,
"I'll do better! I promise!"
Armin smiled and stood up from the couch while Mikasa eyed Eren with ill-concealed suspicion.
"So… what else did you buy?"
The soldier was saying something… important, but Grisha was too exhausted to even understand. Titan- killing took its toll. His voice grew more terrified but it was a far away voice unable to penetrate the thick, warm swamp of…
A rough hand grabbed his face and the most repulsive of smells entered his nose. His mind stilled and senses restored from the scent of:
Smelling salts!
"Grisha!"
"Grisha! We're dying!" Miche roared.
The doctor's eyes snapped open and he groaned as his wagon leapt off the ground and hammered him awake with a crash to the ground.
The inside of the wagon was crammed, his body stiff as a log, while the team of scouts fought to revive him and outside the narrow white canvas of the wagon, were the killing fields.
A titan smashed its hand through a wagon scattering the humans in there into small clumps while wood flung in all directions and a scout shrieked mid-air as his body was peppered with debris from the wagon.
The titan squatted to chew the corpses in its hand gleefully and Grisha cried out in pure fury.
No need for a knife, he crunched down his own tongue and stumbled outside only to crash heavily out of the moving transport. To answer his wishes, he bit his tongue more times than he could count as he tumbled on the hard fields. The force of the impact shattered his glasses, ripped his jacket and fractured an unlucky arm. And all that was trivial compared to the 17 meter titan that towered over him. And I was next to nothing compared to the tens of titans that trampled around the scores of refugees pleading and screaming for help.
Crack!
His fractured arm snapped back into place and he swayed to his feet, desperately scanning around. Miche bolted to him with an anxious expression and grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Can you hear me?!"
"Yes! What happened?" he coughed out.
"Look around you idiot! Titans flooded us from the west! Transform!"
"I can't!"
"What? You… can't?" he asked in dismay.
"I took care… I didn't exceed your exhaustion level. Two! Two transformations a day, you said!" He belted out in disbelief.
"If it's not my body it's my mind-"
Grisha was cut off as Miche forced him to the earth, a few feet from them an entire carriage rolled on the dirt yanking an entire horse along.
"Change! Do it now!" Miche insisted as he crouched over Grisha.
Grisha yanked out his knife and plunged it into his arm. The pain was no relief this time. It was a searing protest from his body and he curled up on the floor near whimpering from the pain. Not a hundred meters from him, a family was being chased on foot by a stubby 8-meter titan.
Focus. Save them.
Seconds away from being snatched a heroic scout glided into the scene and neatly severed the nape out of the titan. Grisha released a sigh of relief just as the titan's body toppled forward and crushed the fleeing family. Miche swore with a glare of irritation at Grisha and ran off on his two legs in the direction of another escaping couple.
"Take it easy." Grisha assured himself when the 17-meter titan looked his way.
And the energy crackled.
"I've already… done this."
The berserk monstrosity dove for him with an outstretched hand, as his own titan burst and rippled into being accompanied by more steam than he knew what to do with. His titan couldn't form in time to block the other titan's dive and both of them thumped to the ground. Grisha hardened his hand broke the nape in a ferocious chop. He cast off the titan's body and plunged above the steam.
With little grace, he rose above the steam as titans all around him placidly faced his titan and lumbered towards him. Perhaps fifteen titans by his count, but all that he cared was the absence of trees, a death-knell to the scouts who swung from titan to titan, struggling to kill enough. Yet, the titans took no notice as they thundered towards him.
In kind, he also moved the ungainly body around him to the west.
Follow here!
The titans moved away from the civilians and refugees rumbling after his body. As he squared to face them, Miche and his men made their reappearance and threw themselves into the frenzy hacking away before his first punch could even connect. They weaved and dove around the backs of the titans as crystal covered fists mashed faces and napes into pulp.
In a few minutes it was over and the soldiers attached all over his body urging him northwards, He followed without delay taking care to at least look dull for the benefit of whatever civilians saw this much. Without going far, he spied the grey peaks of Wall Rose and right in front of them, six titans wrecking through another unit of refugees. The scouts groaned and curesd as one of their own was stamped on in their sight. These titans were slower to take notice of hm and he barreled through their numbers as the scouts pelted of his body unto their targets. The first two titans were short things easily dispatched by the scouts, then another and another just before he smacked a titan into the earh, leaving it behind for them to finish. The last titan was a crawling abnormal that launched itself at him jumping against his torso to knock him flat on his back. The scouts descended on the titan over him mercilessly slashing off muscle, tendon and at last hacking off the nape. As he sat up, a hook stung at his neck and his own nape came off.
The loss of control brought his own titan down and the scouts smoothly extracted his body from the titan. Warily avoiding the line of sight of the civilians, his own body was bundled off like a sack of flour as though nothing had happened.
"Another abnormal." Miche pronounced loudly in front of his titan corpse. "I want a body count! Rally round and count the dead."
"it's alright, this was the last titan attack." Someone assured Grisha. A soldier fired a black flare into the air and as one, they all turned their faces to the sky.
Other flares began reporting in their status as the Black Flares shot up like insoluble pillars.
"What's the signal?" Grisha asked.
"Green for 'undisturbed', yellow for 'engaging titans', black for 'casualties', purple for 'extinct'; which I hope we don't see, you know." The officer paused as Miche fired a blue flare. "And that is a call to regroup at this position."
"We're barely hours from Wall Rose." A soldier snapped.
"You wanna ask the titans to hold on? This is what they do. Sorry but, get used to it." One of his comrades had the grace to reply.
Grisha got up from where he lay on the ground and stumbled in pain to Miche's position.
"I thought the agreement was to keep them as a group?"
The section commander faced Wall Rose without an answer.
"What changed Section Commander?"
"Too many titan sightings. I didn't want to wear you out."
"I understand. And was it the right decision?"
"Right decision? Not in this line of work, doctor."
A/N: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Do please enjoy. I hope the last sequence doesn't come off as clunky. The casualties are heavier than the average scout mission. Best guess gets a character named after them :). heh. Don't forget to review and leave your thoughts behind! Seriously, any input is welcome. Even questions!
Looking forward to That Bright Dawn!