It was now 6:00 in the morning and the sun had barely begun to rise over the horizon, tinting the sky a gentle orange.

"Hey guys, do I really have to do this?" Sasha whimpered, as the other girls pushed her forward. "I'm not the fastest runner."

"Yeah you do Potato Girl," Ymir replied. "Haven't you seen Commander Erwin watching?"

He and Hange had occasionally been peeking their heads out the door, checking up on them after every runner.

"Hurry up so I can have my turn!" Mikasa urged.

"What? Then why don't you go first?" Sasha grumbled. "You're the fastest out of all of us! You could probably tire each other out and make it easier for us!"

"We already agreed that no one wants to wait for Mikasa to mess with the Captain because that would take too long. Besides, it's much more entertaining this way."

"Can we please just get this over with?" Christa begged.

"Okay okay." Sasha finally conceded and crept towards the door. The rest of the girls all held their breath, waiting for the beast to emerge out of its lair. She knocked three times before flying down the hall, Levi barging out the room after her.

"YOU BRATS ARE DEAD!" He bellowed, using his grappling hooks to propel himself forward. He made a wild grab for her shirt, but Sasha was able to slip through his fingers by a couple of millimeters and turned a corner where they couldn't see anymore.

"She's most likely heading for the kitchen," Ymir grinned.

And she did, swiping a soft loaf bread on the way in and hiding in the pantry. Levi rolled his eyes as he arrived, knowing that the girl would be hiding in one of the pantries or cupboards. He had heard the story of her first day with Shadis from Erwin and had noticed her inhaling any piece of food she could reach during the Opening Feast.

Sasha could hear him approaching closer and closer but was too preoccupied with all the delicious food reserved specifically reserved for the officers to care.

"Stupid recruit," Levi muttered. He could hear her eating sloppily a couple feet away and he stormed over, yanking open the door a bit too violently, tearing it off the door frame.

"Goddammit!"

A shriek immediately blasted the Corporal's eardrums and grabbed her by the collar, roughly tossing her out.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He shouted over her screaming, which didn't cease to deafen him.

His eye twitched dangerously. "Shut up!" He grabbed the food out of her hand and she finally stopped, and then had the audacity to try and wrestle it back. His gray eyes widened when Sasha tugged back at the surprisingly tough piece of bread, which crumbled and tore in their hands. She was flung back while Levi stood there in shock.

He quickly shook himself out of his stupor and advanced on the now terrified girl, who began trying to bribe him with food that she didn't even have.

"I'll give you half of everything on my plate tomorrow!"

"You little shits have some balls!" Levi dragged her back kicking and howling by the hair, where she subsequently received a month without dinner.

Letting out a loud huff the short man stomped back into his room, close to where the other girls were waiting for their turns. He plopped down in his chair and rubbed his temples, mentally counting off all the cadets that he had already caught. Originally, he had thought it was just the boys who had collaborated to keep him up all night, but with the arrival of Sasha, he wasn't so sure anymore. Now, Levi was pretty sure it had something to do with Hange and Erwin, the latter who most people wrongly suspected to be calm and boring. Once, all his cravats had all disappeared, and he had thought Hange was the culprit, except she had been out the entire day with Moblit observing Titans. His cravats were later returned to his dresser dyed a light salmon pink, and Levi had been absolutely livid, interrogating everyone in the castle and scaring all his comrades back to a one hundred feet radius. In the end, he never found out who did it, but had a nagging suspicion that it was the Commander, who was the only who had a key to his room and also the only one he couldn't impulsively strangle and toss of the roof in a body bag.

He was pulled out of that horrible memory by another knock on the door, and this time it was Christa. She let out a light squeal when she saw him and took off down the hall, Levi following closely behind. Another pair of footsteps joined the chase and he looked back to see a tall, girl with freckles chasing heatedly after them.

"Christa!" Ymir shouted. "Don't you dare touch her!"

"Ymir!"

Oh right, Levi scoffed. As he recalled, Ymir or whatever her name was, clung onto Christa like a burr the entire time during the feast and warded off any boys who dared come within five feet of the blonde.

"Go back Ymir! It's not your turn yet!" Christa tried to shoo her back, still running.

The Corporal stopped cold in his tracks at those words, and Ymir couldn't stop in time, ramming into his back and bowling him over.

"Oh no Ymir!" Christa turned back to catch her taller friend as Levi violently flung her away from him.

"What is this about a turn?" Levi snarled, and from behind the wall Erwin and Hange began to fidget nervously. Oh balls if he finds out he'll probably slit our throats in our sleep and then burn our corpses and feed the ashes to the Titans! They looked at each other anxiously.

Erwin was pretty certain that he was the main suspect on Levi's list of people who dyed his cravats pink, since the cleaning obsessed Captain glared daggers at him for the rest of the month whenever they happened to meet in the halls. Also, not even a week after the prank on humanity's strongest, Levi had passive aggressively spilled ink all over the Commander's shirt, staining it black. And no matter how hard he tried, Erwin just couldn't seem to get it out, making him almost certain that Levi had made it himself for that sole purpose as the ink he always ordered was washable. Then, his subordinate had put blue powder in the showerhead so that when Erwin turned on the water it came out a dark blue that stayed in his eyebrows and hair for about four days. Levi had actually laughed when he heard Erwin's surprised yelps from inside the bathroom as he listened in, and to top it all off he was so startled that he had run out completely naked smacking right into Gunther who was passing by, ending up on top of him. As if the embarrassment of falling onto his comrade as nude as the day he was born wasn't enough, Eld was there to witness the whole thing.

All three of them refused to make eye contact for a week, and Levi wasn't even mad about the blue water the Commander trailed all over the place when he had stumbled out of the shower.

And since Erwin didn't have any official evidence on whether or not Levi was the real culprit, the blond man could only seethe silently at the smug look on the Corporal's face every time they sat together. So, consider this payback.

And the mad scientist next to Erwin wasn't on Levi's good side either. Two days ago, she had carelessly tracked mud and rain all over the entire freshly mopped castle and then later accidentally poured a kettle of his favorite tea all over his head when she tripped on her own boot. (And then cracked a joke about his height as she sprinted away to try and diffuse the tension, which obviously didn't work very well.)

"Should we bar the door?" Hange whispered.

"No, if we do that then we might as well tape a sign on our foreheads that say, 'We put the recruits up to it.' Just keep watching for now," Erwin exhaled.

Outside, Levi continued to try and pry information out of the two girls, who seemed to have now clamped their mouths shut. After about twenty minutes of threats and cursing with no advancement whatsoever, they were sent back to their barracks with two months of bathroom duty while Levi trudged back to his room.

If he remembered correctly, there was still one more recruit left…