In the meanwhile, Mike, who had gladly taken advantage of the momentum from the kick to fall onto the body of the girl in his arms and started a barrage of public display that was very much on the lewd side, was finally able to peel his hands and body away and kissed his final goodbye.
Right at the tick of the time when the commander of the Military Police started rushing down the narrow ladder.
Mike, a blonde Giant towering over six feet two, definitely took up a lot of more space than the relative slender built head of the Military Police. He almost knocked the latter out of balance while brushing up against him on his way up the rungs with his shoulder.
The commander slipped at least three or four rungs down the ladder before he finally recovered his balance thanks to all the three dimensional maneuver gear training he had back in his Recruit Corp days. Though he was able to avoid the terrible fate of landing into the river in a winter morning and having a very intimate encounter with icy cold water, that was the final straw. While letting out tons of low grunts and indiscernible curses and swears, the Commander definitely ran away as fast as he could, and literally disappeared into the thick mist in a blink of eye.
'Hi, Nile, did not know that you are so good at running away! Is it the reason that they made you the head of the Military Police? For your special talent in retreat?' Mike stopped after climbing up on to the barge, and shouted over his back into the mist with a voice that was so loud that everybody on the dock could hear as clear as if they were right next to him.
Almost everybody on the barge burst into laughs, which, if not caused, was definitely made worse, by the young girl standing right next to him who had started to make faces. All kinds. Ugly, annoying, funny, angry, eyes rolling back, tongues sticking out, hands on her ears, fingers up her nostrils...Anything a human could imagine, and as fast as anyone could pull it through.
Probably because he was standing right next to her, thus a front row seat on the hilarious show. Mike was the definitely the one laughing the hardest. So hard that he almost choked on his own tongue, while the young girl tried to pat him on his back. She raised herself on her toes, and waved her hands desperately in the air, as if Mike was too tall for her to reach his bending back, in a very exaggerated way.
Even Levi, who had not moved at all since he was escorted on board, shifted in the position he had settled into for a long while, and skimped a slightly curious look over their direction. Erwin could swear that those heavy lidded slant eyes almost livened up and there was a tiny trace of amusement, almost discernible.