Chapter 17: Love and War
"So, I heard you finally managed to enter a controlled berserk state again," Hange remarked with an open expression of curiosity. "Did you figure something out, or was it just a lucky coincidence?"
"I think I may have figured something out... but I'll definitely need more practice before I can say for sure," Heidi admitted honestly with a nervous and slightly tense smile. She couldn't say she was really looking forward to that though, given how the first day had gone. If that pattern continued, then it looked like today was shaping up to be another glimpse into hell.
"Before that," Levi said calmly as he set his teacup down, getting their attention. "I want to see how you fight when you aren't in some kind of berserk mode." It had occurred to him that they still didn't know what she was like on a normal day; how her usual speed, strength, and reflexes were. He needed to know that sort of thing if he was going to lead her effectively along with the rest of his team. He had read her file and seen her scores from training, but those numbers didn't always hold up under the pressures of reality. He needed to know how accurate they were in the event where she couldn't rely on her berserking abilities to pick up the slack.
"Ah, that's true," Hange mused, thinking along the same lines. When they found her the other day, she was already in a controlled berserkergang and had been fighting without gas or blades, so they didn't even know much about how she usually used her 3DMG either. Just because she graduated second in her class of untested rookies didn't necessarily mean she could keep up with experienced veterans that well while being attacked by titans under normal circumstances.
"Hm? But Heidi graduated second in our class," Eren said. He would have though that kind of information would already be in their files.
"Second to what?" Levi asked coolly. "Those ranks don't always carry as much weight as they seem to. For all I know she placed second because everyone below her was terrible." Eren flinched and Heidi sweat-dropped. He had a point, but that seemed pretty harsh, considering Eren had been one of the top ten who ranked lower than her.
"Um, Eren graduated sixth, by the way..." Heidi felt compelled to point out for some reason.
"And he got eaten," Levi retorted bluntly. "Both of you did, actually, to varying degrees."
'Uwah, he's completely right about that...!!' the two recruits realized, grimacing and feeling incredibly embarrassed. It didn't help that Oruo had snickered at them, but Petra put him into order pretty quickly. It wouldn't have been a laughing matter at all if they hadn't survived. In fact, it still wasn't.
"Fair enough," Heidi sighed. "I wasn't really trying to argue against it, though..." She thought she understood what Levi was trying to say, especially after having experienced fighting titans in real life. It was nothing like training. Or, rather, it was something that no amount of training could ever completely prepare you for.
"Well, let me know how that goes," Hange said, standing up, intending it as a signal for the need to be excused from the table. The squad leader's expression darkened slightly at the memory of where Hange had to be. "I'll be working on the investigation into Sawney and Bean's deaths." They still hadn't caught their murderer yet.
"Any idea who the culprit is yet?" Levi asked, glancing up at her. Heidi thought she saw something deeper than the usual appearance of detached boredom in his dull grey eyes, but she couldn't say what.
"No, not yet," Hange replied grimly. "I wish I could say 'we're closing in on them', but due to the lack of evidence at the scene, it looks like we won't be able to identify them unless we inspect every individual's gear, and you know how long that will take..."
"Better get a move on, then," Levi said.
—∞—
After breakfast, Heidi found herself facing the daunting task of demonstrating her 3DMG skills to her new captain and veteran teammates. Levi had warned her that if they couldn't find any suitable targets stored at the castle, then she would have to spar with him, so she was relieved when they managed to find some fake 'titans' that were still intact enough to serve their purposes. She already knew from previous experience how hopelessly outmatched she would be if he got serious, and wasn't stupid enough to suffer from the illusion that she might actually stand an even chance against him on her own if she was armed after seeing the way he moved the previous day. She also felt it was far too early for that level of pain and humiliation.
"It's just like when we were training, huh?" Eren remarked while he waited with her at the starting line on the edge of the woods near the castle for the others to finish setting up the dummies, so she wouldn't have a sneak peak at what to expect. Frankly, he was just happy to have a break from cleaning and fixing up the yard, which still needed a lot of work despite the hours they put into it all of yesterday.
"Kind of," she agreed, feeling more nervous now than she had then. She knew they would be comparing her performance here against when they saw her fighting off titans barehanded... Her normal abilities hardly seemed worth mentioning next to that. She and Eren looked up as Levi landed beside them.
"We're ready to go," he announced. "The goal for this exercise is to locate and 'kill' as many targets as possible. I'll lead you through the course, and Eren will follow from behind. Protect him as if this were the real deal," he instructed her firmly. Heidi furrowed her brow with determination and nodded to show she understood.
"Yes, sir."
The three of them moved quietly through the trees in the order Levi gave them. Heidi's eyes constantly scanned her surroundings for signs of an 'attack' while making sure to maintain a safe distance between herself and Eren. She had expected at least one of the targets to pop out at her right away, but it seemed they had other plans. Perhaps they were looking to make her lower her guard first? Her eyes widened slightly when she passed a tree with an odd shadow and quickly realized her mistake.
"!" she gasped, quickly whipping her head around to glance back at the target that had begun to swing out from the thick trunk to come up behind. She quickly released a spurt of gas to spin herself around and fired a grappling hook into the fake titan's back to reel herself in, shooting past Eren just as he was turning to glance back at it himself, and had the nape of its neck carved out before he even had a chance to comment.
'She saw that, huh...?' Levi thought approvingly, noting her quick reaction time. "!" His eyes narrowed slightly with concern when the next target popped out between him and Eren. The timing was just as they had planned, but they hadn't expected that Eren would be too distracted watching Heidi to notice he was about to slam into a wooden wall. "Eren! In front!"
"!?" Eren gasped, eyes wide when he looked forward and realized what was about to happen. He wasn't sure which was more shocking—almost hitting the target, or being kicked away by Heidi at the last moment as she flew past and spun herself around, twisting her wrists as she went, so that her swords were held in a way that let her use the force of her own momentum to slice out its nape as she rolled across the back of its neck.
'That was...!!' Petra thought, surprised to see such a familiar maneuver performed by a rookie, as Heidi called out to Eren.
"Pull up, Eren!" Heidi shouted, reminding him that he was about to hit the ground. He quickly expelled a burst of gas and fired a grappling hook to raise himself and catch up to her.
"Pay attention," Levi scolded him. "Just because someone else is supposed to protect you doesn't mean you can relax and act careless." That could have caused a major problem if that had been for real.
"Y-Yes, sir!" Eren answered. He felt that he already knew that and was embarrassed, but he didn't dare talk back to their intimidating commanding officer. "!" Heidi held her arm out to signal for him to fall back as the third and final dummy swung out to cut them off from Levi. Since this one faced her head-on instead of from the side, she used a small burst of gas to adjust her course to follow an angled curve to the side, dodging the area around its mouth, and fired a grappling hook into the side of its neck to reel herself in for the kill. She sliced through the last padded target easily.
"All right. Bring it in, everyone," Levi called, bringing himself to a halt to land, as the others came out of hiding. "Any special notes or comments?" he asked the more senior members of his squad, giving them a chance to speak before he delivered his own assessment.
"Yeah, what was that move you used on the second one supposed to be?" Oruo asked Heidi challengingly with a frown. "You trying to imitate the captain or something? Tch. So lame." Her form was terrible. That wasn't how you were supposed to hold the blades at all, not that he could do it either, but still.
'That's you, isn't it?' Petra and the rest of his teammates thought, sweat-dropping.
"Huh?" Heidi said, frowning slightly in confusion.
"Are you saying Captain Levi uses a move like that, too?" Eren asked, surprised.
"Ah, that's right," Erd said, suddenly realizing something. "Neither of you have actually seen the captain in combat yet, have you?" he asked the two rookies.
"Oh, that's true!" Petra gasped, remembering that Eren had already passed out after closing the hole in the wall before he could see Levi take out the one that had threatened to eat him, and Heidi couldn't have possibly seen the captain use that maneuver yet, because...
"Right, you were already inside that titan's mouth when Captain Levi and Squad Leader Miche moved to save you!" Gunther finished, astonished.
"Huh?" Oruo said, scowling in confusion. "Then how...?"
"How? It's just something I sort of stumbled on while we were training..." Heidi answered a little hesitantly, wondering why there were all making such a big deal out of it. "The momentum from the spin helps add more force behind the attack, so... But it's kind of hard on the wrists, so I try not to rely on it too much."
"... That's because you're holding it wrong," Levi told her, stepping forward to show her by arranging her hand around her blade's handle in the correct grip. A normal person would have broken their wrist trying that.
"A reverse knife hold?" she asked, recognizing the position.
"It's more stable," Levi replied, wondering if she had picked that up in training too, or if her grandfather had also tutored her in knife-fighting before shipping her off to join the military. He wouldn't be at all surprised at this point. "Try it again like that." Heidi glanced between him and her hands and the target.
"Okay..." she said, deciding to give it a whirl. She quickly moved into position and launched herself into another spinning attack, aiming for the part of the padded target on the neck that was still intact. Her eyes widened slightly, surprised by how much easier it was this time. It almost felt like slicing through butter in comparison. She landed with her back to the others and stared at the new grip in awe.
"Well?" Levi prompted her. She still wasn't quite up to his standards, but her form was much better this time, and he could see at a glance that the newer cut was deeper.
"A... Amazing!!!" she said, turning to look at him with sparking eyes and the biggest smile he had ever seen. "It's so efficient! The speed, velocity, and force improved so much... Thanks, Captain!!" she told him brightly, radiating sincere gratitude at an almost blinding level. Levi stared at her for a moment, as though he wasn't quite sure how he should react to such an enthusiastically positive and honest response. It had been such a long time since anyone had smiled at him like that, that he honestly didn't know what to do with it.
"... Is that so?" he said calmly with a straight face, turning away. He looked between the results of her first attempt and the second more closely. He could see why she had been in the top ten. Just changing the grip wouldn't have normally made such a noticeable difference so quickly. Most people would have needed more time to adapt. She had been doing her best to refrain from fighting back too much yesterday when they tried to simulate danger for her, but he had caught a few glimpses of what was confirmed now; her reflexes and fighting instincts were already topnotch, even without going berserk.
"Geez! What's with this brat?" Oruo grumbled. That was the type of response you would expect a normal girl to show towards being given a kitten or a puppy, not a better fighting technique. "Who does she think she is, swooping in and ingratiating herself to the captain like that?"
"Haha... Heidi really likes learning new techniques," Eren said with a wry laugh.
"Honestly, I'm impressed she was able to get so close on her own," Gunther said.
"Even we would have trouble pulling that move off so well," Erd admitted.
"I'm a little jealous... the captain seemed kind of happy, though," Petra said with a small smile. Eren had to admit he was feeling a little jealous, too. He also wanted to train more.
"Well, at any rate, I think we have our answer," Levi said, acting as though he hadn't heard any of that. "Earlier, you told Hange you might have figured out something to help you control going berserk, right? In that case, I'll give you twenty minutes to activate it on your own. If not, it'll just be more of the same as before."
"Got it," Heidi said with a nod, furrowing her brow with determination. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She stood there, focusing her thoughts on her mother, Jacob, her grandfather, her friends, and titans—all the while, careful to keep her goal in mind. She didn't want a repeat of yesterday, but she couldn't afford to lose it, either.
"What is she doing?" Oruo asked dubiously, only to be quickly shushed by Petra.
"If all you're going to do is stare and make noise, you guys can get started on the lawn," Levi told them. In fact, it would be better for them to move away in case this went south. There hadn't been a need to worry about that as much when it was just the two of them, and she hadn't snapped and lost it despite the different forms of abuse he had been forced to put her through before, but he didn't want the others to end up becoming collateral damage if they happened to be too close when the worst case scenario happened. But they were too curious for that, so rather than be sent away, they chose to immediately fall silent.
He stood there watching her for another ten minutes. Then, like a silent ripple in a pond, some sort of change seemed to come over her and spread throughout her body. Her hands unclenched themselves, and she opened her eyes again and looked at him with an unnaturally calm expression and wide, dark pupils.
"What should I do now?" she asked, noticing that he seemed slightly surprised that she had actually done it.
"Show me that same maneuver again," he ordered her.
"Yes, sir," Heidi answered and immediately did as she was asked, launching herself at the next dummy. Eren and Oruo's eyes widened in shock at how drastically her speed and the depth and accuracy of her cut increased—She was a blur of green cloak and flashing steel, spinning in tight rotations too fast to count. One blink, and it was over. Eren had never seen anything like it before, not even from Mikasa, and the veterans there would have thought they were watching their captain fight if not for the flash of her red hair.
"Did you mean to do that?" Levi asked Heidi, referring to how she had carved out a couple of inches of wood along with the padding, as she rejoined them and landed next to him with an almost abnormal catlike grace. He suspected that if he dropped her in her current state, she would land on all fours, too.
"No," she answered calmly, examining her blades for signs of damage. "I didn't mean to cut that deeply. I'm not completely used to this extra strength yet." She had only intended to cut the soft target to within a hair of touching the wood, but it seemed her accuracy still needed a bit of work.
"We'll have to work on that, then," Levi said, eying the sharp and clean cuts in the wood. "Now try to undo it."
'Eh?! She finally managed to activate it on command, and now he suddenly wants her to stop?' Eren thought, sweat-dropping.
"Um..." Heidi said, thinking something along the same lines, as she closed her eyes and try to relax. The problem with that was, she had already entered this weird sort of zen state where she was beyond calm, so how was she supposed to get out of that? It wasn't like there was a switch she could just flip back and forth. She had the feeling that thinking about things that upset her could ruin the balance and tip her controlled state into an uncontrolled one, but thinking about happy things... well, that didn't seem to do much either way. "I don't think I can yet."
"Don't think, do. If standing around doesn't work, then try moving," Levi ordered. "If you need motivation, then you'll be doing yardwork until you can snap out of it." He paused and, then, as if he could read her mind, added, "If there isn't a switch then make one." They couldn't have her walking around with her pupils blown wide open like that or people might think she was on something and start asking questions they didn't want to answer. "You go with her, Petra. The rest of you, let's get this area cleaned up." Petra looked at Heidi, and Heidi stared back at Petra.
"Yes, sir," the two replied and left to carry out their orders while the men finished cleaning up.
—∞—
"So, whose idea was it to trim those scraggly bushes into cute little goats?" Hange asked when she joined them for dinner that evening. "Because I have to say, that was a nice surprise to return to after such a disappointing day."
"Ah, that was Heidi," Petra replied as Oruo and Eren brought out the vegetable stew they had prepared for that evening, nodding at the tired redhead, who was slumped in her chair against the table with her head down, buried in her arms.
"Yeah, she wore herself out again," Erd said wryly. It was amazing how she had managed to finish cleaning up the yard to the captain's strict standards as quickly as she had. In fact, he was so pleased that he had decided to capitalize on her enhanced cleaning abilities by having her spend the rest of her energy sweeping out the wing they weren't using.
"Heh, I'm surprised you let her get away with that, Levi," Hange said. Oruo mumbled a few words of agreement under his breath.
"It was done neatly, after all," Levi replied carelessly. Whether she had really intended it that way or not, it had been a good exercise for controlling the accuracy of her cuts. "It's a shame she ran out of steam shortly after that, though."
'I still can't believe she did it all using her 3DMG...' Eren thought as he glanced at her, sweat-dropping. It never would have occurred to him to use their main weapon for fighting titans against an unruly yard. "Hey, Heidi," he said, nudging her to wake her up. "Come on, it's time to eat."
"Hgn..." the sleepy redhead groaned and reluctantly picked her head up and sat back so he could put a bowl in front of her.
"So, Heidi," Hange addressed her, "now that you're awake, are you ready to tell us what the key to your controlled berserkergang is yet?" She wanted some good news after another frustrating day of no results on Sawney and Bean's case.
"Yeah, I thought about it a lot..." Heidi answered seriously, holding her chin. "And I'm pretty sure it's 'love'."
"..." Levi and the rest of the table stared at her. Many of them seemed surprised. Mostly because of how she could say something like that with such a straight face.
"L-Love!?" Eren asked, taken aback. How could she say something that embarrassing so calmly? For who? Captain Levi!? Did she actually like being kicked around like that!? "Wasn't it rage?"
"Well..." Heidi began to explain, when Hange suddenly gasped.
"I see! I didn't think of that!" the squad leader said excitedly with a face that screamed 'eureka!'. "Romantic love is another emotion that can make the pupils dilate! Studies have shown that they widen when you look at someone you're physically attracted to."
"Huh?" Heidi said, sweat-dropping, as she furrowed her brow in confusion.
"So? Who's the lucky guy, pipsqueak?" Oruo leered at her, immediately jumping on the chance to tease her as revenge for the previous evening.
"Wait, that's not what I..." she tried to say, when Eren cut in.
"Now that I think about it, you were really popular in our training class," Eren said thoughtfully.
"Wait, what?" Heidi asked, genuinely surprised and taken aback. That was definitely news to her. "How?"
'She's asking 'how'...?' Levi thought, furrowing his brow slightly. With that stupid look of disbelief on her face, her confusion was almost comical, though he had a feeling these guys were taking what she said before the wrong way.
"Wow, is that true, Heidi?" Petra asked, impressed.
"No way!" Heidi said quickly, waving her hands as she started to panic a little. This conversation was getting way too out of hand! "People would sometimes come to me for sparring advice, but..."
"No, it's true," Eren insisted. "You were the second most popular among the guys, after Krista."
"Huh!?" Heidi exclaimed, blushing furiously as her confusion deepened. If that was true, they had a funny way of showing it. The only guy who had ever showed any obvious sort of interest in her like that was stupid Peter. "Why?"
'Now she's asking 'why'...' Levi thought. This brat needed to work on gaining a little more self-awareness.
"Yeah, a lot of guys were interested in you," Eren continued. "Apparently, they thought you were cute, but they were too intimidated to actually approach you... I guess they got scared because of how you were always destroying Peter. You're so strong, they were worried you'd put them in the infirmary, too."
"What? That's ridiculous," Heidi said with a frown. "I only did all that because it was Peter. I'd never do that to someone who came to me in earnest. I'm not going to beat someone up just because I don't like them back."
"Haha, yeah I told them that," Eren laughed with a wry smile. "But after the shower incident they were too terrified to even get close."
"Shower incident?" Hange, Petra, Oruo, Erd, and Gunther asked curiously, sitting up in their seats a little.
"Yeah, I caught Peter trying to peek on us girls while we were in the showers, so I taught him a lesson," Heidi answered evenly with her arms crossed. "I made sure the punishment fit the crime."
"You nailed him the eyes with your soap and blinded him so he couldn't see, and then beat him to within an inch of his life..." Eren reminded her, sweat-dropping. Peter almost had to drop out because of it. "Don't you think that was taking it a little too far?"
"No, that was definitely the right call!" Petra said firmly, backing Heidi up 100%. Just thinking about something like that happening made her angry.
'These girls are scary...' Eren thought warily. Oruo silently seconded that emotion when he saw the dark expression on her face and nervously thanked his lucky stars that he had been too chicken to go through with his own desire to try the same thing with her. Erd and Gunther very wisely decided not to comment on the subject.
Levi pretty much thought the bullying brat got what he deserved. The perverted idiot had reaped what he sowed. And it clearly wasn't too far, because he still kept going after her right up until their graduation party.
"But... to think you guys were actually pointlessly wasting time by ranking us girls..." Heidi said with a disinterested sigh, attempting to move the subject away from herself and that perverted creep. "You boys sure had a lot of time on your hands, huh?"
"And cold comments like that are the second reason why your popularity lost to Krista's..." Eren remarked dryly, sweat-dropping again.
"So, if it wasn't someone from your training class you were thinking of, then who...?" Hange asked bluntly.
"Was it someone from your village?" Petra asked.
"Wait, hold on! Before you guys start that up again, I need to correct something," Heidi said firmly. "I never said it was romantic. There are many different kinds of love, you know. Like familial love, and the kind of love you feel for friends, and so on..."
"Ah, that's true," Hange said, finally easing off a little after considering that.
"Oh, sorry, Heidi," Petra apologized kind of sheepishly. "We jumped to the wrong conclusion..."
"Tch. I didn't really think this violent brat could get a boyfriend anyway," Oruo scoffed.
'I actually did sort of have one for a while, but they don't need know that...' Heidi thought, sweat-dropping, feeling a little chagrined. They would just end up getting off track again. "Anyway, to answer the original question, about why I don't think rage is the answer... Maybe it was at first, but going deeper, I realized that anger was rooted in love. The first time I ever went berserk, it was because the person loved most in the world was hurt and violently killed and taken from me right in front of my eyes. I couldn't accept that. That complete and utter feeling of powerlessness and the desire for more made something inside of me snap. Because I couldn't accept the limits placed on my body, something inside me removed all of them, along with my reason. I activated the ability to go berserk, but my rage made me mindless. I couldn't control myself at all." Her mother had died a painful death, and she couldn't forgive that, especially since it had been for her sake. If her mother had been alone, she probably could have gotten away. Heidi didn't exactly feel comfortable talking about it, but she felt it was important to discuss this with them since they were there to help her get control of this ability. "Then another woman who looked like that person was killed in exactly the same way, and I lost it again. The thing that brought me back to myself was remembering my mother... not her death, but one of those quiet afternoons where we were just sitting and talking together... And then I remembered Jacob and my grandpa, and all of you guys from the training corps. I realized I still had other people I loved who were waiting for me and counting on me to come back. I wanted to go home to everyone. That realization gave me the drive to take control so I could survive. Those feelings were the difference between a mindless, careless onslaught with no regard for my own safety and a carefully planned battle with the goal to return alive."
"I see..." Hange said, while the rest of the table sat in silence, taking it all in quietly. "That does seem to fit the pattern... While studying the record of known berserkers that had been marked on the family tree drawn in that book your grandfather gave us, I had noticed that, while it was more common for the men in your family to go berserk, the few women who did had a higher likelihood of reaching a controlled state... and they usually activated it in an instance where the safety of their home or another member of their family were threatened in some way... one had to do with a grown woman rescuing her lover from a fire, and another involved a child using her enhanced strength to tear a collapsed roof off of a sibling. In each instance it was said that an unnatural sort of calmness seemed to have come over them, and they were able to stay cool and collected under pressure while they continued to care for the injured. Even though this ability was famous for it's use on the battlefield, neither of these cases involved the need to confront an enemy combatant in battle. I wonder if that's why... the motivation to do something beyond causing harm may have been the difference."
"Hmm... 'you have to be tough to be a woman'... huh?" Heidi mused quietly, holding her chin again.
"What was that?" Oruo asked, having not heard her properly from his end of the table.
"Oh, it's just something my grandfather used to tell me. He said women have to be three times as tough as men, because they have twice as much shit to deal with," she explained.
"That sounds about right," Petra agreed wryly. Given the kind of life his own mother had lived, Levi had to agree. He wondered if that was why the old geezer had trained Heidi as hard as he had.
"I also heard from him that the lower form of berserking is usually linked to some sort of psychological trauma," Heidi added. "So maybe that's why?"
"A difference of mental fortitude?" Hange said. "That could be it... With war, there is always the stress of the threat of losing your life, watching your comrades die, and the potential for how the fallout from losing could negatively affect your loved ones back home. Certain members of your family, who were more susceptible to that kind of emotional strain, somehow had their brain chemistry altered as a reaction to the pain, which made them go berserk, and then those who could control the pain, learned to control their berserkergang... focusing on something 'external' may have helped add a balance to the 'internal'."
"Then... why did you go into a controlled berserk when Captain Levi made you run?" Eren asked, furrowing his brow slightly in confusion. "No one else was being threatened, and there wasn't anything particularly more life-threatening about that than the other things he put you through earlier that day, right?"
Levi was curious about that as well.
"Ah, that. Well... I thought about that, too, and it's part of what led me to the 'love theory'. I guess I just loved myself too much to go along with the risk of being immortalized as 'Vomit Girl'!" she said with a wry smile and a laugh, rubbing the back of her neck.
"I see," Petra said with a small smile, while she and the others chuckled.
"Tch. Vomit Girl is too good for her..." Oruo muttered moodily.
"..." Levi stared at her.
"Yes?" Heidi asked when she noticed.
"Nothing," he replied, turning his attention back to his tea. That girl had strange priorities, though he supposed 'Vomit Girl' was pretty bad... back in the day, he probably would have killed someone if they had dared to call him something like that to his face.
'No, that look had whole lot of 'nothing' in it...' she thought, sweat-dropping, feeling a little chagrined. She still couldn't quite place it's meaning, but she knew that there had definitely been one... and she was pretty sure at least part of it was that he had been laughing at her for some reason. Well, in hindsight, the incident may have been a tiny bit funny, but...
"So, if you've figured out the key to activating a controlled state of berserk, then how about deactivating it?" Hange asked curiously.
"Oh, well... that area still needs a lot of work..." Heidi admitted, rubbing the back of her neck. "So far, the only time it's worn off before I've reached the point of passing out from exhaustion, the release followed a sort of 'mission accomplished' type of feeling... Sorry, it's still pretty vague..."
"Oh, well, at least you're making progress, right Levi?" Hange said, looking on the bright side.
"We'll pick it up again tomorrow," he agreed.
