"Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle." - Martha Graham, Dancer

Chapter 10: Casablanca

No longer did Nephele soar through the air on her three dimensional maneuver gear. Bullets do not soar; they cut through wind itself.

Never before had she truly appreciated the weightlessness that came with falling towards the earth, or the way her harness dug into her skin and pulled her body with it. She was dancing with the currents of the sky, weaving through the branches of trees, kissing the sun's rays. This was serenity.

The final test didn't even seem like a test at all. It was just her and the sky and the air and her gear. It didn't matter that dozens of cadets were vying for their last chance for a spot in the top ten, that she had a certain quota of titan decoys to hit, or that she was being closely watched by the instructors perched on the tree's limbs to evaluate her and her peers. If she focused on the task at hand, her perception was clearer, her abilities sharper. She didn't think with words, but rather actions. She did as instinct willed her to do.

She reached her first clearing with a decoy. It was a crude, fifteen meter tall wooden titan, the red stained leather on the nape of its neck a distinct target. Rather than take her eyes off her prize, she first listened for the buzz of cables being reeled in, the thunk of grapples as they bore into a tree branch, the rustle of leaves as someone passed. All she heard was the chirping of cicadas, and the tapping of some woodpecker's beak against the trunk of a tree.

Shooting her cables at two trees across the small clearing, Nephele allowed enough slack so that she'd swing just above the wooden decoy, letting her blades cut out a chunk of leather as they passed. By the time she had finished her arc through the clearing, she heard Connie's distant shout behind her. She didn't dwell, always constantly moving, only putting her feet on the branches to push back into the air every time she shot her cables into another tree.

She was met with no opposition for the next decoy, though by the time she had reached the third, there were two other opponents for her to test her mettle against. Unable to waste time identifying them, Nephele shot her cables at a branch high above the decoy and released as much gas as her tank allowed to reach the top. She had a clear view of the decoy now, but didn't linger long for any sight seeing. She attached one hook to a branch on a tree opposite from her, and the other on the decoy itself. She then kept the cable connecting her to the branch taunt and dropped to the ground, triggering the switch to reel in the other cable and releasing more gas from her tank. Her opponents were too busy dealing with one another to notice Nephele until she had swooped down at cut out a large chunk of leather from the decoy's nape. She released the hook attaching her to it while the other cable kept her from hitting the ground. Gravity and momentum made her swing in a sideways semi-circle, and she released that hook as well to land in a crouch on another branch.

"N-Nephele?" Jean called out. The redhead looked back and spared him a confident smirk.

"Fuck!" cursed some unnamed cadet, who threw his blades into the dirt and lowered himself to the ground.

At the next decoy, Mikasa had beaten her. Nephele had been about to make the final swing when the girl appeared out of nowhere, cutting Nephele off and inflicting the blow.

"Teach me how you do that," Nephele requested, wondering how Mikasa used her gear so efficiently.

"It won't matter once you join the Military Police," she replied before disappearing back into the forest.

The instructors seemed to have wanted to spice things up a bit, as they had posted five decoys in the same area. When Nephele reached them, Annie Leonhart had gotten there first, and was already working on the second decoy. If she got all five, she'd probably end up outranking her in the test. Gritting her teeth, Nephele went for the second to last decoy, leaping into the air then shooting her cables only a meter apart from each other to reach maximum speed. She released the trigger to pull herself forward, shooting through the trees like a bullet. It would take just over three seconds to cross those fifty meters, yet it still wouldn't be fast enough.

Still connected to the tree, Nephele knew that she couldn't increase her speed any further, or she'd be knocked unconscious from too much blood going to her brain, and splatter all over a tree. She had to keep her speed, aim straight, and cut off Annie's path of travel. Annie was maneuvering around the titan decoys. Nephele would just have to slice through them. She unlocked the blades from her hilts and plugged in fresh ones, which she would have to use for her idea. There wouldn't be enough reaction time for her to simply avoid the targets if she directly approached them either, so this was her only option.

The width of the wooden titans was only six inches thick, but at the speed she was going, if she slammed into them the results would be fatal. She would need to slice through the first and third decoys, which were directly in her path of travel. By the time she reached the third, Annie would be just finished slicing through it, which would leave the last two decoys as her spoils. She didn't know the single-edged swords' capacity, so this would be an experiment. Her blades might snap off, and she didn't know if she had the ability to replace and wield them in a fraction of a second.

Nephele first directed her body forward so that it was parallel to the ground and aimed herself at the first decoy's chest. This one was fifteen meters tall, and the third was ten meters, but the last two had both been only seven meter class. She had to aim straight like this to allign herself with the last two decoys napes. Hopefully, Annie didn't reach the fourth decoy at the same time as Nephele, or she'd probably end up cut by her swords.

The blades themselves are incredibly sharp thanks to how thin they are, so rather than cut the decoys in half and risk snapping them, Nephele held them out directly in front of her, the point of each blade touching so that it would (hopefully) act like a drill, and aimed them at the decoys so that her head (hopefully) wouldn't collide with them. She used the last reserves of her tank's gas as she released the cables and rotated her body. At the speed she was going, her rotations made Nephele seem like a smudge of red and beige streaking through the forest.

She sawed through the first decoy with ease, then the third, wood chips showering down on her and Annie as well. The fourth, she had drilled through the entire leather nape and wooden head, obliterating it, and the fourth she managed to cut out a half circle of leather.

Releasing her blades to prevent Nephele from accidentally cutting herself, still rotating in the air -albeit, at half the speed she was just at- she blindly discharged her cables, one low and one high. The sudden change in direction almost made her faint, and the second cable gradually decreased her speed as she slowly began to reel the cable back in by gradually applying the cables made her swing three hundred degrees until she released them, shot them back at a branch above her, and slowly pulled herself upwards until swinging onto another branch.

When she looked down at the scene below, she saw that she had caused the first decoy to split in two and the third's entire upper half was decimated. Annie was nowhere in sight. She sat down on the branch to get a level head, feeling dizzy and nauseous.

"That makes five," she murmured to herself. After a five minute break, Nephele sighed and took a leap into the air.

By the time the green signal flare was shot, Nephele had accumulated eleven points. She had grappled with Mikasa four times throughout the entire test and scored only one point against her, two against Annie, one against Reiner, two against Bertolt, one against Jean, and one against Eren. The rest of her points were either met without resistance or against cadets she wasn't too familiar with.

As she maneuvered back to the checkpoint, Nephele was filled with anxiety and hope. She knew she had reserved herself a spot in the top ten, but she wasn't sure how well she scored. By the time she reached the checkpoint, several other cadets were already waiting for Instructor Shadis' evaluations. He waited until every cadet was present.

"You've all completed your final test as members of the 104th Trainees Squad. Many of you performed to the best of your ability, some below, but few did even better than what was expected of them." It seemed like Shadis was always yelling, unless he's indoors. Nephele recalled their first day of enlistment, where almost every cadet including herself was scared shitless of Shadis. Then, they grew up, and the monsters that haunted their nightmares now weren't retired Commanders, but the beasts that lurked beyond the Walls.

"Ten of you have proven your skills to be above the rest in training, and ten of you are eligible for joining the Military Police. Your results will be given to you individually when you leave the training grounds. Although you've completed training without killing yourselves, remember that you still have much to learn. You're dismissed."

When a line had formed to Shadis, Nephele wasn't too far back. He called her name, "Ambrosia," and she stepped forward, receiving the piece of paper that he handed her."

"Number two again, Ambrosia. That was quite a dangerous maneuver you did back there. I'm still not quite sure if it was skill or luck, but we'll see how you perform in your future endeavors," Shadis muttered as he stared down at her with his weary, deep-set eyes.

"Thank you," she responded, trying to maintain a composed demeanor in front of her superior and peers. Number two. She imagined how strong she might be hadn't she spent five months in convalescence.

"The Survey Corps doesn't need suicidal kids like you."

The comment stuck with Nephele for the rest of the day. Joining the Survey Corps was almost the equivalent of suicide, so it struck her as ironic. Perhaps that faction was the one that needed her most.

Following the Graduation Ceremony and during the "after party," as Sasha referred to it as, Nephele had fallen in love. Her love was slim and slender, made her feel like she was sitting in a warm bath, and tasted like over ripe fruit. In a bottle of hard cider, she found bliss.

"What is this?" Nephele slurred out to Jean, almost slamming her tin mug on the table, the liquid in it sloshing around and spilling on her hand.

"It's alcohol," Ymir said between chuckles. Everyone was red faced both from the alcohol and laughter. Apparently, Nephele had never even had a sip of beer.

"Jeez, Nephie," Connie drawled, his chin propped up on his hand. He noticed how she didn't even flinch at the mention of the nickname this time. "How old are you, anyway? And you haven't even had a drink before?"

Nephele furrowed her brows as she thought long and hard about this question. "Um… Twenty."

"Holy shit! You look twelve!"

Nephele's closest consorts were gathered around a large, circular maplewood table in a Great Hall of some grand hotel. They were celebrating the 104th Trainees Graduation in Trost, dining on cuisine the likes of which they had never tasted while in training. Many cadets had never even had anything like it, Nephele included. A dozen crystal chandeliers, the epitome of wealth, hung from the patterned marble ceiling. Everything was gilded until it shone gold, from the sconces to the white table cloths and the diningware as well. There was a buffet table for the cadets to choose from, and Nephele had been thrilled with the assortment of food they had available. For the past two years, all she had eaten was broccoli, soup, potatoes, and bread.

There were even plenty of vegetarian options! Nephele had chosen a large plate to shovel food on to, and chose fettuccine with alfredo sauce, garlic bread, stuffed aubergine, and a slice of lemon chiffon cake. After she had worked her way down the long table and admired every platter of food, wishing she had the belly of a titan, she reached the drinks. She had poured herself a mug of cold apple cider from one of the several wooden barrel taps, and had fallen in love with its crisp, strong flavor.

Now, Nephele was on her third mug. Her toes and fingers tingled and her body was pleasantly warm, her brain, as she said, "fuzzy like a bunny."

"Wait, Nephele," Jean interrupted, putting the brakes on her train of thought. "Have you ever had sex with anyone?"

Befuddled, Nephele frowned and shook her head. It took her a minute to fully comprehend the question, and by then she had already given her answer. Her pink cheeks turned an even deeper shade of red.

"Well, what about you, Jean Sean… haha, sheep." She giggled, her brain subconsciously trying to distract herself from its own embarrassment. "What about all of you? Which brave soldier has seen the battlefield of the bedroom?" She took another swig from her mug.

Connie and Sasha exchanged a brief glance, while Ymir laughed boisterously, hugging her stomach and tilting her chair backwards. "Battlefield? What are you wielding in those tight trousers, Neph?"

"So you have had sex?" Jean asked Ymir, astounded. She smirked at him and wrapped her arm around Krista's shoulder, picking her glass of whiskey off the table and twisting her wrist to stir up the ice before downing the rest of it without so much as a grimace. Krista blushed and batted her lashes as she chewed on her lip.

"Sure. I don't see why it's such a big deal. What about you, horseface?"

"Y-Yeah, obviously!" he stammered.

"Oh, really? Who?" challenged Ymir. She looked over at Marco, whose eyes were wide with innocence.

"M..."

"'Mmmmm….my hand?'" asked Connie with a smirk.

The table bursted into laughter at that, while Jean leaned forward in his seat towards Connie, glowering at him. "Oh yeah, and who've you fucked, Pin Head?"

"My girlfriend, idiot." Shaking his head, Connie wrapped an arm around Sasha's shoulders. The two had been together for the past three months now. Sasha, who had been stuffing her face with smoked ham, covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed.

"Mikasa?" Sasha nudged the girl sitting next to her with an elbow, waggling her brows. "How about you?" The stoic girl shook her head. "Have you ever even kissed anyone?"

"I kissed Eren when we were ten. It was weird," she murmured, her expression unwavering as she stared at the contents of the cup in her hand. Eren, appalled and mortified, shook his head violently and waved his hands around.

"Mikasa! What the hell? We weren't supposed to talk about that ever again!" he bellowed from the opposite end of the table, his face red. To his right, Armin started laughing to himself. No one even bothered asking him if he had gotten laid before, though he didn't mind. The answer was pretty obvious.

Nephele downed the rest of her drink in one big gulp, a bead of hard cider trickling down her chin. She realized that out of her group of friends, which included Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Ymir, Krista, Sasha, Connie, Jean, and Marco, only herself and Armin had never romantically interacted with someone before. Of the ten graduates seated at the large, circular table, there were two official couples, those of which being Connie and Sasha, and Jean and Marco. There was obviously something going on between Ymir and Krista, but Nephele didn't think that it had yet passed the boundaries of an official relationship.

Jean turned to Nephele once again, who had just been diagnosed with a case of hiccups. He noticed the way her long lashes, lengthened even more with a coat of mascara, brushed her cheek bones with every blink. He frowned.

"Have you kissed anyone either, Nephele?" To that, she shook her head, much to the group's incredulity.

"But you're twenty!" Sasha proclaimed, as if Nephele didn't already know her own age. Well, she was a little drunk.

"So what? There's plenty of people who haven't kissed someone at my age," she muttered, wishing she had more alcohol. She was too comfortable to want to get up.

"Yeah, but those people are ugly," Sasha said flippantly.

Frowning, Nephele looked down to avoid all of their wide eyed, gaping stares. "I just wanna wait until I fall in love," she murmured under her breath. Their reactions were a mixture of "awes" and laughter.

'I wanted it to be Levi, though.'

That night, Nephele wandered the streets of Trost alone, listening to the rhythmic clicks of her heels on the cobblestone. Those shoes had somehow managed to weather two years of intense training, though they weren't nearly as elegant as they used to be. There were stains deep down in the suede that she couldn't scrub out no matter how much soap she used, and they were worn with use. The soles no longer had any grip, and it was a wonder how she managed to do so well during the final exam while wearing them.

She needed a new pair of kicks to celebrate her graduation. Cadets were paid a small sum every month, and over the past two years Nephele had only spent a tenth of the coin she had accumulated. She carried a few hundred gold on her person, tucked safely away into a pouch in her bag. It was nice to wear something other than that dusty leather uniform for once. For the occasion, she'd worn a violet chiffon dress with white lace trimming the hem and sleeves. The pendant her mother Ligeia gave her years ago hung between her small breasts, right above her heart. She couldn't remember the last time she took it off.

Passing by all of the cute boutiques, many of which were still open, Nephele stared at the displays set up behind the windows. There were three tier cakes with intricate iced roses in one shop, and cozy looking fur coats in the other. The practice of skinning seemed barbaric to Nephele, and she grimaced with distaste despite how comfortable it would be to be wrapped up in one. There was a store selling rescue dogs that caught her eye, and Nephele cooed at the cute litter of pups huddled up to one another as they slept soundly on a pile of hay behind a display window. She watched their tiny bodies rise and fall with their breathing, and fantasized about being able to hold one in her hands.

Nephele glanced up when she heard a tiny bell tinkle when the door swung open, her eyes meeting with those of the shop owner. She was a short old woman with circular spectacles and snow white hair piled on top of her head in a bun.

"I see you've taken a liking to the newest litter," she noted, her voice thin and reedy like the chirping of a songbird.

"They're adorable. What kind of dogs are they?" Nephele politely asked.

"They're golden retriever, husky mix. They were strays, and the mother was run over by a carriage a few days after they were born. My husband saw it happen, and found her litter in an alleyway." The woman's smile faded. "Poor things. Humans aren't the only ones who feel pain."

Nephele didn't know what to say, but the old woman's words made her think. Titans kill people, people kill animals, yet no one shows remorse over a slaughtered cow the way they do when a human gets eaten by a titan.

"Would you like to play with them? I don't have any customers at the moment, but I've got plenty of dogs to look after. You can feed them if you'd like. It's about time for their night time snack."

Nodding with enthusiasm, Nephele's eyes blue eyes widened. "That would be great! Thank you."

"No, thank you," she insisted, opening the door for Nephele to step inside. "Feeding those pups is one less thing I have to do."

Once inside, Nephele was greeted with a chorus of barks to welcome her. There were about twenty dogs in six by ten foot wire cages lining each wall stocked with fresh supplies of linens, kibble, and water. There were mostly mutts of all shapes and sizes, though there was an old pitbull laying on its nest of sheets looking up at her with wide eyes. All the sudden barking must have woken it up.

"Hope you don't mind the noise. I'm sure the neighbors do," chuckled the old lady as she led Nephele to the window display where the puppies were. There was a wooden plank to keep the puppies from falling out of the display area, but one could easily reach their hands in to get to them. "Go ahead, scratch them behind the ears to wake them up. I'll go get a bottle."

Mystified, Nephele outstretched her hand towards the sleeping puppies, petting one behind the ears. It's fur was a mix of gold and silver, it's ears droopy. They were no bigger than both of her hands together. The creature stirred, stretched its fuzzy little paws, and yawned. Nephele's heart did a little flip.

"Oh my goodness," she murmured as the puppy opened its eyes and squinted at her. It crawled on top of one of its siblings on wobbly, stunted legs, waking that one up as well. The other pup nipped at its ankle, and one by one each puppy was awake. By then, the woman had returned with two bottles of milk. She handed each to Nephele and said, "We have another dog who's pregnant right now, so we use her milk to feed them. I boiled these up for you."

"Do I just…" Nephele's voice trailed off. She had never fed a puppy with a bottle before, or anything for that matter.

"Just hold out the bottles and let the pups do the work. Just make sure they all get enough," she advised. "My husband is visiting family behind Wall Sina, so he won't be back for a few weeks. I'm glad to have a few extra hands."

"The pleasure's mine, really," assured Nephele. The woman then left, disappearing behind some back room.

Chewing her lip, Nephele looked at the litter of pups. Shrugging, she decided it'd be easier to just climb into the display area with them. She pushed aside the pile of hay with her shoe to clear a spot for herself, then climbed into the alcove with them with the bottles in handThe puppies immediately flocked to her, pawing at her legs as and making goofy faces. Nephele had never seen something so flipping adorable. They were playing king of the hill with her lap, each trying to climb to the top by pushing each other off. They nipped at her calloused fingers and wiggled their bums, not quite having mastered tail wagging yet.

There were five pups. One was creme colored with a white belly and paws, another gray and white with ears more upright ears. There was an all black puppy as well, the largest of all its littermates, and two with more prominent golden retriever characteristics.

Nephele fed the black and gray pups first, scooping them up one in each arm as the others vied for her attention and stumbled all over the place. The puppies instantly calmed as soon as the bottles touched their mouths and started drinking it's warm milk. There hadn't been a second that Nephele wasn't smiling. After she fed those pups, she fed the two gold ones, and after those there was only the creme colored one left. She cradled it in her arms, and it wrapped its paws around the bottle as it fed. The others were now sleeping once more, the soft sounds of their light snoring making Nephele a bit drowsy, too.

When the creme colored one had finished. Nephele put down the bottle and pulled the puppy to her chest. It nuzzled its face into her neck and there it fell asleep.

"I see that one's taken a liking to you," the woman said as she returned to find Nephele leaning against the wall with the pup. Without looking up, Nephele smiled and stroked its soft fur.

"I've always wanted a dog," she said, thinking back on all the arguments she had gotten into with her parents as she begged for a fuzzball to call her own. They always declined her pleas, saying that they wouldn't be responsible for the dog, and Nephele wouldn't be able to take care of it. Yet here she was, taking care of herself. She wondered what her mother and father would think of her now, what they would say if they knew of her plan for conquest. She had never thought about it that way. Is this what they would have wanted?

Revenge mustn't be for the dead, then. It's a way the living find peace.

"If you've got enough coin once the pups are grown up, you can take one home," she suggested, taking the bottles.

"That's out of the question," she said, her smile fading.

"Why's that? Parents won't letcha?"

Laughing morosely, Nephele shook her head. "No, not quite. My father was eaten by titans, and my mother sent out to reclaim Wall Maria." She paused. "I never even got to bury them." Suddenly, Nephele felt ashamed for telling this stranger her problems. She wasn't one to confide in others when everyone else had their own nightmares to fend off when they closed their eyes.

The wrinkles in the old woman's face seemed to deepen as she frowned. "Many people share your story, child. I lost my sister a month after she joined the Survey Corps fifty years ago."

Nephele's shame, like a weed, branched out into into several more negative emotions; sadness, despair, hopelessness. She wondered how many friends she would lose in the next few years.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, still not looking at the woman.

"Don't be."

"I think it's about time I head back," Nephele announced, reluctant to wake up the puppy still sleeping in her arms. She gently returned it to its brothers and sisters sleeping peacefully on their nest of hay without waking it. It stirred, opened its small jaws to yawn, and snuggled up to another pup for warmth.

"If you're looking for work, I could always use an extra pair of hands," she offered as Nephele climbed out of the alcove and back onto the floor. Nephele thanked her but said she had to decline.

"I just graduated from the Trainees, and I'll be heading to Wall Sina in two days for the Military Police," she informed her.

Before Nephele left, the kind woman gave her a few coins for feeding the dogs and wished her luck in the MPs. Nephele had a fleeting desire to live that kind of life, where she could look after a bunch of mutts and live out the rest of her days with someone by her side. Then, she realized what a tedious and unfulfilling life that would be.

"Your shoes are super cute!" Mina remarked the following morning as the trainees were gathered on the streets of Trost, their leather uniforms stark in contrast with the civilians' attire. Grinning, Nephele lifted her heel for examination, a hand placed haughtily on her hip. Nothing made her feel better than a cute pair of shoes. They were a pair of pale pink high heeled boots that reached an inch above her ankle. The heels were specially designed with the same material used to make the military's equipment, a rare natural resource called iron bamboo. She had bought the heels at a cute boutique and brought them to a smith. When she requested he alter the shoes to make them more durable, he had given her a look of skepticism, and his suspicions only grew when she handed him a broken blade to melt down.

This way, her heels wouldn't break from strenuous activity and she wouldn't have to worry about a sprained ankle.

"Yeah, I've spent the last two years saving up for a good pair of shoes. They're inlaid with iron bamboo so that the heels won't snap," she said, proud of her new purchase.

"Wow, that's so cool! Aw, I've always wanted a pair of laced boots," Mina cooed, framing her cheeks with her hands.

Nephele caught Eren rolling his eyes at her, so she stuck her tongue out at him defiantly.

When the large brass bell in the city's clocktower began its clangor, Nephele wondered what it meant. At first, her initial thought was that it was heralding a titan invasion, but then she heard the crowd's chattering, and the hooves of walking horses.

"The Scouts have returned!"

"Did you kick those titans' asses, Commander Erwin?"

And then, the words that squeezed around her heart: "Look, it's Captain Levi!"

Whether the sudden leap in Nephele's chest was from relief or fear, she couldn't tell. She was relieved that he was still alive, but scared of seeing his face. For the second time in her life, Nephele was thankful for being so short. She couldn't see very well above the crowd that loomed over her. When the sound of hooves drew nearer, she knew that she would be able to see Levi's head on horseback. It had been a year…

As long as she knew he was alive, it was enough. If Levi were to die, so too would humanity's hope, and so too would her heart.

So, she bowed her head and waited for the convoy to pass.

Even if he hadn't searched, Levi wouldn't have missed the flurry of Nephele's red hair. With the sun's rays shining down on them all, the light caught her hair and almost made it seem alive with flames. A nimbus circled her head like a saint or a ring of fire, yet her face was hidden by the crowd, her head tilted down as if something demanded her attention more than the presence of the Survey Corps. He knew that she didn't want to look at him, and didn't blame her. He claimed it as his own sort of small victory.

Maybe her hair was so red because she was baptised in blood during birth.

"Captain Levi." Petra demanded his attention then, yet he didn't tear his eyes away from Nephele until his horse had passed. Not once did she look up.

"Yes, Petra." Tugging at his cravat which had seemed a bit tighter all of a sudden, Levi looked at the brown haired woman to his right. She asked him what he had been looking at, and he said it was the stain on some butcher's shirt. She smiled knowingly and shook her head, but left it at that.

Nephele had never been atop the Walls before. Even with the ODM to put some distance between her feet and the ground, she had never had a phobia of heights until she stood behind the parapets of Wall Rose.

"Holy fuck. I never knew it was so…"

"Big?" Mina finished for her as the two stared at the landscape that stretched endlessly, its boundaries passing even that of the distant horizon. The trees looked like specks of green, the villages the homes of sophisticated insects. The mountains seemed like they were painted on the sky, too resplendent in their nobility to be real.

"Yeah. It's nothing like standing next to it," she murmured, not for the first time noticing the ungainly beasts wandering aimlessly below. Several scratched at the walls, rearing their hideous heads and wide, unblinking eyes to stare at those manning the cannons above them. She could make out wisps of steam in her peripheral vision that evaporated back into the air when the streaks of blood they left on the walls from their mindless clawing dissipated.

"That titan, the colossal one…" Mina didn't finish her sentence, and she didn't have to. Nephele closed her eyes, trying to push the thoughts of something so fearsome away from her brain. Against something like that, humanity's fate didn't seem so bright.

"Yeah."

"Hey, Mina, Nephele! Come here!" Sasha called out to the two, her voice like a bucket of cold water. Nephele was grateful for it. Maybe being so close to the sun was starting to fry her brain.

"Nephele doesn't eat meat, idiot," reminded Connie. Sasha shushed him.

Once they reached the small group of graduates, which included Sasha, Connie, Eren, Thomas Wagner, and Samuel Linke-Jackson, it was revealed that Sasha had managed to smuggle a hunk of meat from some officer's storehouse. While they debated about the morality of stealing valuable meat until each acquiesced, Nephele turned back to the vast expanse of what once was the outer Wall's territory. Sasha had seemed so sure that they would retake that land one day, promising that they'd be able raise more cattle and that meat would once again be in abundance. If titans won this fight, she thought that the animals would be much happier.

When she looked up at the sky, she thought that it would be a much nicer place to live than down here.

There was a sudden flash of light so bright that Nephele's vision went white. Her ears rang from the explosion like a gun had been fired right next to her head, and looming over her was a mass of muscle and sinew and despair personified.

It all happened so quickly, and Nephele was too frozen with shock to react. Then, a burst of steam erupted from the Colossal Titan's body, obscuring her vision and burning her flesh like someone had dumped boiling water on it. Screaming, she stumbled back, and the thunder to the titan's lightning shook the Wall as a gust of wind and steam shoved her backwards until gravity brought her down.

It wasn't like free falling during training. This was real, this wasn't what she signed up for. She saw the limitless sky above her and righted herself as she descended, shooting her cables at the wall and feeling her body jar from the sudden change in motion. She put her new heels to use and skidded down the Wall's side until her cables were pulled taut. She was grateful that they were reinforced with iron bamboo, or they'd surely been rubbed raw from the friction.

Once she had ensured her own safety, Nephele looked around to check the status of her comrades. Connie, Eren, Thomas, and Sasha had managed to secure themselves with their gear, but Samuel wasn't among them. She looked down to see his figure plummeting towards the ground, and before she could think of a solution Sasha had disengaged her grappling hooks from the Wall and started sprinting down the Wall's side. Once she was close enough to his unconscious body, she shot one of her hooks into his leg.

"Shit," muttered Nephele to herself. She didn't know that Sasha was capable of such critical thinking.

Then she heard Eren and Connie's curses, and her head swiveled over to the breach in the wall that the Colossal Titan had kicked in. The hole was massive, and soon titans would come filing through it. Nephele thought about the sweet old woman and all of her rescue dogs, and the terrible fate that they'd be subjected to. She thought about the woman's husband, and the grim news he'd receive, and the guilt he'd feel for being behind the safety of Wall Sina while his wife suffered a gruesome death between the teeth of some titan.

Eren's voice interrupted her thoughts and brought her back to the current moment, the task at hand. "Fixed cannon maintenance team four," he shouted. Nephele couldn't see his face very clearly, but his body language and voice were emanating unadulterated fury and determination. "Prepare for combat!" A spark of steel flashed like Levi's eyes when he unsheathed his blades and vaulted his body towards the Colossal Titan, it's hand still visible as it gripped the top of Wall Rose. It's giant fingers left indentations in the brick, flecks of rubble flaking off now and then. "Our target is the Colossal Titan before us. This is our chance! Don't let it get away!" He was practically screaming, and the graduates watched as he disappeared over the Wall.

Eren had it all wrong. There was no chance.