(31 days to the expedition)
The fresh recruits that had stayed behind to join the Survey Corps were woken at 6 AM by Section Commander Ness, they were then told to make their way to the carts stationed outside after getting dressed so they could make the journey to the old Scouts HQ, now being used so Eren could be safely secured until the upcoming expedition.
Nick had a feeling that the enemy would make their move during the expedition, it all came down to Commander Erwin and if he had the resources to capture them. Because Nick was convinced that the expedition was a trap for the traitors, it couldn't be anything else, unless Erwin just felt like telling the recruits every detail of their plan, whether they joined or not.
He wasn't sure who the enemy actually was, despite having evidence that Annie had killed the two captured titans using Marco's gear, which was removed from his body by force, not being chewed on like the poor boy was, Nick was having a hard time believing that it was here, sure she isolated herself during training, but that either meant that she wasn't working with the Colossal and Armoured Titans, or she was smart enough to avoid them to not arouse suspicion if one of them were found out. He dismissed that idea, surely she wasn't smart enough to do that.
They could see the castle in the distance, it was rather large amd out if the way. "Perfect place to hide a secret weapon." Nick thought, thinking about how Eren had been treated since he was taken here a few days ago. Once they got up close to the castle he could see the intricate stonework that was used to build the castle. He also noted it was surprisingly clean for bit having been used for some years, with there being little to no vegetation crawling up the side of the building. "Did they clean the outside of the castle?" He asked himself.
Once they had reached the castle they were told to get off the carts and were given their new uniform, the brown cropped jacked with the wings of freedom on the back. They were also given a cape with a hood that was to be worn on expeditions in case it started to rain.
"Listen up." The man with the white bandana that woke them up earlier in the day said. "I'm Section Commander Ness, but before we get started, is there a Nicholas Meier here?" He asked, catching Nick off guard.
"Yes Sir." He responded while raising his hand, indicating that it was him that Ness sought.
"You are to report to Section Commander Hange, you're gonna be a part of her squad, she should be in her office so off you go." He dismissed him while turning his attention to the other recruits left there.
As he left in search of Hange's office he couldn't help but wander why he was put in her squad. "Why would I be put with her? I wonder if it was her or Erwin who made the decision?" He asked to himself, hoping Hange didn't request him just because he gave her his cadet jacke that was practically soaked in titan guts.
It was then that he realised that he had no idea where he was going and probably looked like an idiot while walking around the castle. "That's what I get for not asking for directions." He scolded himself. "What an idiot I am."
He was then brought out of his thoughts when he heard a yelp as he accidentally walked into someone, sending them to the floor while he stood still above them. He looked down to see a woman with short blonde hair rubbing her head as she seemed to have hit it when she fell.
"Sorry." He said as he offered her his hand to help her up.
"It's fine." She said as she accepted his hand, him hauling her up rather quickly in the process. "Just watch where you're going next time." She said as she released his hand and began to walk past him before he stopped her.
"Wait, do you know where Section Commander Hange's office is?" He asked, not wanting to waste any more time looking for it.
"Why you looking for her? Shouldn't you be with Ness?" She asked him, raising her eyebrow at him.
"I was assigned to Section Commander Hange." He told her.
"Ah, so you're the "eye candy" that Mike talked about." She stated, eyeing him from top to bottom, and she had to admit, he was extremely attractive.
"He called me eye candy?" Nick asked, slightly creeped out that Mike had called him that.
"Follow me." She told him, ignoring his question about what Mike called him. "I'm Nanaba by the way." She told him after he started to follow her down the corridor.
They had barely spoken a word on the way to Hange's office except for when they exchanged names with each other.
"Here it is." Nanaba stated, as she stopped at the door at the end of the hallway.
"Thanks." He told her, grateful that she showed him the way.
"Calm down Hange!" A voice shouted from inside the room just as Nick was about to knock.
"Good luck." Nanaba said as she walked away, leaving him on his own outside the door of the crazy titan lady as he liked to call her in his head.
"Hange, you're making a mess!" A different voice called out, female this time.
He then proceeded to knock on the door three times, loud enough so that anyone on the inside could hear despite the sounds coming from inside the room.
The door opened, revealing the crazy titan lady herself. "Nick, it's good to see you, I assume you're here for the introduction right?" She asked.
"Section Commander Ness told me to come here." He bluntly replied, his voice sharing none of the enthusiasm that hers did.
"Such a buzzkill, you sound like Levi." She stated, opening the door wider to reveal a man with brown hair and a woman with reddish brown hair, both of them looking at him.
"This is Moblit, he's my assistant." Hange stated while pointing at the man. "And this is Nifa." She told him, pointing at the woman. "You can meet the rest later, but since Nifa is the only qualified combat medic on the squad, she'll be doing your medical examination. Now." She told them.
"Why do I need a medical examination?" Nick asked, doubting that he actually needed one.
"When was the last time you had one?" Hange retorted. She had him there, the last one was when he joined up when he was fifteen.
"Exactly." She said, taking his silence as his answer. "Nifa, take him to the infirmary for his check up."
He could have sworn that he saw his commanding officer wink to Nifa as they left the room for the infirmary. They arrived at the infirmary with Nifa going into the cabinet to search for a stethoscope and a clipboard to write down the results on to.
"Right, so when was the last time you had a medical check up." She asked after he had sat down on one of the beds in the infirmary, they were all free so he just sat down at the nearest one.
"When we signed up over three years ago." He replied truthfully, there was no use in lying to her since they were going to be squad mates.
"Okay then, first I'll need to take your height and weight since it will have changed since then." She explained. "You'll need to take off your boots." She told him, gesturing to the height scale on the wall for him to stand next to. He stood next to the scale while she touched the top of his head with her pencil, having to stand on her toes lightly to reach.
"Okay, one eighty two." She said, writing it down onto her clipboard. "Okay now I need you to remove your harness, jacket and shirt so I can get an accurate measurement for your weight." She told him once he stepped away from the wall.
He sighed in annoyance, this was going to take a while. He did as he was asked, removing the clothes from his upper body, revealing his very muscled torso for Nifa to gawk at while he wasn't looking. His face and lower arms were slightly tanned while his chest, abdomen and upper arms were quite pale, almost a milky white in comparison to his face.
He then stepped onto the scale, waiting for Nifa to tell him that he was finished so that he could step off.
"Okay, that's just over seventy nine kilos. You can step off the scale now." She told him, but right at that moment someone decided to walk into the infirmary. The door opened to reveal a short woman with orange hair walking in, then stopping at the sight in front of her.
When Petra had walked into the infirmary for a few bandages because Eren had somehow cut himself while using the broom to sweep the stables, what she didn't expect to see was Nifa standing there with one of the new recruits she saw earlier with no shirt on.
"Uhh... hi Nifa." She akwardly managed to get out while Nifa's face flushed red with embarrassment.
"It's not what it looks like Petra." She quickly answered back.
"I never said it looked like anything." Petra replied with a smile on her face.
"It was just a medical check up that Hange ordered me to carry out on our new quad member." She replied, her face still red from the embarrassment.
"Strange, we never usually do those." Petra thought, before dismissing it because Hange could be a bit weird sometimes.
"I remember you from the trial, me and the rest of the Levi squad were upstairs watching." She told him. "Why weren't you in uniform like the other cadets were?" She then asked as he put his shirt back on.
"I didn't go to the trial as a cadet, I went as a citizen of the Inner District." He casually replied.
"Uhh Nick... you'll need to take your shirt off again so I can take your heart rate." Nifa managed to get out without stuttering.
He sighed again, this was so pointless, he saw Nifa glancing at him earlier which had made him think about what Frieda had said about finding a girl that he cared about that was actually living and not in his head, and now he could see the other woman, Petra blatantly staring at him. "Dont they know it's rude to stare!" He thought to himself.
He then felt Nifa put the stethoscope to the left side of his chest as she pretended to look at the pocket watch she had in her hand while she was still glancing over to his abdomen.
"Fourty seven, fourty eight, fourty nine." She finished with at the pocket watch made a full rotation on its face with the second hand.
"That's quite low." Petra commented from the cabinet after she had managed to find some bandages.
"People with lower resting heart rates tend to be more physically fit." Nifa explained as she jotted down the heart rate. "Now I'll need your working heart rate." She told him.
"Such bullshit." He thought. "Hange and Mike definitely did this on purpose."
Nifa then had him do exercises such as push ups to try and increase his heart rate, and the best way to do that was to make him tired and sweat a bit. Although it was getting a bit boring after he had done over 150 push ups in the past 5 minutes without slowing down.
Petra on the other hand was enjoying the show, despite the fact she should have left a few minutes ago, she was quite relieved that she could be free of Olou and his Captain Levi act for the time being.
"Go faster." Nifa commanded, using hee superior rank to her advantage. He obliged, speeding up his push up rate, almost going twice as fast as before. He had slmost reached four hundred and fifty before he gave up trying and told them he was tired.
She then took his heart rate which was surprisingly low at 134 for having done over 400 pushups in less that eleven minutes.
After he had put his shirt back on and put his harness back on, petra left as another man wearing goggles entered the room.
"Hey Abel." She greeted the man.
"Hi Nifa." He replied. "Commander Erwin sent me, he wants to talk to him." He said while pointing at Nick.
"Well I'm done here, so he can go." She told him as Nick finished putting his jacket on.
"Follow me." Abel instructed as he left the room, heading towards Commander Erwin's office with the rookie in tow.
He then stopped at a door with the label "Commander" on the front, he knocked on the door which was then followed by a "send him in" from the inside.
The door opened revealing Commander Erwin, Mike, Hange and Captain Levi inside the office. Erwin was sitting in the chair behind the desk, Levi was leaning on the wall next to Mike while Hange sat in a chair off to the side.
"Sit down." Erwin said. "We have something we need to discuss." He plainly said as the door was closed behind Nick, leaving the five in the room on their own.
(23 days to the expedition)
"How does that midget do it?" Nick inwardly questioned after another failed attempt at recreating Captain Levi's spinning attack he had seen him use from a distance back after Eren had sealed the breach in Trost.
"Am I just too tall?" He asked himself. "Or maybe it's the way I hold the blades?" He asked, struggling to explain why he wasn't able to do it.
"Why are you so insistent on trying that move?" Frieda asked him.
"Because it could seriously help when taking on the titans." He replied to her.
"He is labeled as "Humanities Strongest", there's not much you can do if you compare yourself to him." She told him.
"You're right, but how is he so good? Unless..."
"Unless what?" Frieda asked, now confused.
"Unless he's an awakened Ackerman, that would explain a lot, especially his skill with the ODM gear."
"But he doesn't have a last name, how would you know he is one." Frieda stated.
"The power doesn't come from the name Frieda. It comes from the blood in the veins." He told her.
"I know that, but still, you can't go around assuming that he is one because he is better than you."
"You're right, I can't assume that, I know that he is, it's the only explanation, plus his eyes and hair are the same as Mikasa and my mothers."
"But your eyes are green, and your hair is brown." Frieda countered with.
"I don't know why that is, but I still have the awakened power, so maybe it's from my fathers side." He countered back at her.
"Hey!" A voice called out from above. "Why are you so persistent on learning how to attack like that."
Nick turned to the voice to see Captain Levi standing on another branch just above him. "It seems like it would come in handy on the battlefield." He cooly replied with.
"I would suggest doing it properly, the way you do it hurts my eyes." Levi replied with, the insult not having an effect on Nick.
"Any tips?" Nick asked.
"Yeah, get better." Levi told him.
"Sounds like you don't like me." Nick stated.
"Thats because I know you're up to something, thats the whole reason for being here, isn't it?" Levi stated as he joined Nick on the lower branch.
"Really?" He asked sarcastically. "What am I up to then?"
"You expect me to know that?" The Captain rhetorically asked.
"No. But I'll tell you if you give me some tips." Nick told him.
"Fine." Levi agreed to the compromise. "You're forcing the spin too much when you slash, it has to be more natural." Levi stated.
"Hmm." Nick mused, wondering if he was actually being given useful advice. "Let me try it out first." Nick suggested as he launched off the branch, searching for a dummy titan to practice on. He came across one that was raised in front of him, he shifted slightly, changing his grip on his right handle as he he spun, not forcing it too much as Levi told him to, he reached the dummy titan as he finished his first rotation, giving him even more speed as he slashed the nape, cleanly cutting to the base of the nape.
"Looks like the midget's advice paid off." Nick mused to himself.
"That was marginally better, enough to be less of a pain on my vision." Levi coldly told him. "Now spill it." He then demanded.
"I'm planning to fight for our freedom, that's all."
"What?" Levi growled out. "That's not an answer, give me your real reason for being here."
"Sorry Captain, but you're not my superior, Nifa is, and even then Section Commander Hange is her superior, so you can't order me like you can with Eren." He said right before he shot off further into the forest leaving Levi behind.
"Shitty brat." Levi growled out. "He better hope he doesn't get anyone killed with his plan." He said to himself as he shot off in the other direction, he was supposed to be watching Eren after all.
(11 days to the expedition)
"Ugh, solving a murder is harder than I expected." Nick stated to himself after going through the theories that he had thought of in his head. They were getting him nowhere, he had basically no evidence apart from Armin's word and a cut on a belt that was burned with Marco's body.
"Why don't you try something simpler." Frieda suggested, worried that he was getting too stressed from all the thinking he was doing lately.
"Like what?" He asked. "I have literally nothing to use as evidence or even speculate with."
You could do a background check on Annie." Frieda suggested.
"Ehh, what?" He asked as if he was just given the meaning of life.
"You know, it's what you do to gather evidence isn't it."
"I know what it is, but why would I need to get one on Annie?" He asked obliviously.
"So you can find out about where she came from, maybe her comrades used the same village as her on their form for the military if they joined." Frieda told him.
"You're a genius Frieda!" He exclaimed as he jumped to his feet and rushed to the one desk in the room he shared with the members of his squad. "I would kiss you if I could!" He declared as he grabbed some paper and looked for something to write with. "Now I just need to send a letter to one of those lazy MP's that work for my father, then I can have them do it and send their findings to me!" He thought.
"Settle down Nick, you haven't found out anything yet." Frieda reminded him.
"Oh well Frieda. I just have to hope that they take their job seriously enough to send their findings back before the expedition."
Why before the expedition?" Frieda asked, now confused by his sense of urgency.
"Because if I know who her potential accomplices are then I can determine where in the formation they are, and then where they will most likely attack from." He told her.
"And if the enemy doesn't attack from there?" She asked him, skeptical of his reasoning.
"Then they'll be cleared from suspicion, not Annie though, I'll still need to ask her about the gear she presented though."
Well then, I'll leave you to it." Frieda spoke once he had finished.
"Right, thank you Frieda, truly. Now, where can I find a pencil around here?"
(7 days to the expedition)
"So this is where we will be in the formation." Abel said as he pointed to the middle if the centre rank of the formation. "Our job is to defend the supply wagons, without them we'll run out of gas and blades out there." He continued with.
"But if the idea if the formation is to avoid titans, then why do we need so many troops defending the wagons, wouldn't it make sense to have more spotters on the flanks." Nick suggested.
"You didn't let him finish." Keiji pointed out. "He'll get to that, you need to learn to listen."
"As I was saying." Abel continued on with. "Nick you will be part of the Fourth Section that covers the troops as they clear the town outside the walls." He said while circling the town on the map. "Then you will link up with the rest of the Fourth Section and you will make up the rear contingent."
"Right, so who do I report to after we clear the outskirts of Karanes." He asked.
"You won't." Hange interrupted. "Once we reach our first checkpoint here." She said pointing at a forest on the map. "You will regroup with us while we continue on with the expedition. Alright."
"Yes Sir." Nick replied.
"Good, now go get some sleep, I'm sure you need it." Hange suggested.
Once Nick had left the room some of the squad members had begun to voice their disapproval at him being put in the rear contingent.
"Hange." Moblit started. "Are you sure putting him in the rear contingent is a good idea?" He asked her.
"I agree with Moblit." Nifa stated. "He may have just completed training but he's still a prodigy."
"You got a crush Nifa?" Keiji teased, which caused Nifa to blush at his statement. "But seriously, he's probably one of the best rookies we've had in a very long time, and the rear contingent will basically be a death trap for him."
"I have to agree with them Section Commander." Abel stated, now throwing his opinion into the mix. "I don't see how throwing away the life of possibly one of our best helps us achieve anything."
"It was Erwins decision." Hange finally spoke. "He wanted to see if he could handle himself, he said it would be a win-win situation." She quietly said.
"Eh? How would him dying be a win for us?" Nifa asked, quite angry at Hange's previous statement.
"Erwin sees him as an obstacle for what we want to achieve, and after what happened at the courthouse, he isn't taking any chances." Hange explained to them.
"What happened there?" Keiji asked her.
"The letter from the Royal Assembly was a forgery, and it was Nick who wrote it." Hange explained to them.
"But still Hange, he did help us." Moblit protested.
"Enough. It was Erwin's decision and that's final." She ended the protests with.
"Yes Sir." The four of them replied with.
(1 day to the expedition)
"What the fuck took them so long?" Nick questioned out loud. "Lazy bastards can't do anything right. What do we even pay them for?" He said as the letter he had awaited for the past ten days had finally arrived.
"Let's see what it says." Frieda said as he carefully opened the letter which contained the contents of the completed background check of Annie Leonhart.
"Blah blah blah, an unnamed village, suspicious." He mused out loud before continuing. "No living family members, fits the criteria for an enemy spy." He stated before continuing.
"Is that right?" Frieda asked as she saw the names of the two others from the same village as Annie.
"It should be, but I never expected him. I always thought she hated him." Nick spoke out loud once again.
"It's just... they were so dedicated during training, I never would have expected them." Frieda spoke once again, her voice quivering when she spoke.
"They certainly played the part of a soldier well, but there's only one way to see if they're soldiers, or spies." He told her. "If we're attacked from the front right wing, we know it's them."
(Streets of Karanes, day of expedition)
All the scouts had gathered just before the outer gate of the Karanes District, waiting for the all clear signal for the gate to be lifted so they could begin the 57th Expedition. Nick was situated near the front with some others of the Fourth Section since they would be defending the convoy until they reached the open ground past the outskirts of the border town.
Nick was currently stroking the black mane of his black horse that he had aquired shortly after joining the Scouts. The horse was a female, so it was fitting that he had named it Florian after his childhood friend, the black mane reminded him of her dark hair, back before she was killed by Grisha Yeager, the man who had passed his powers onto his thick headed son, who most believed was humanities last hope.
"The titans have been lured away!" One of the Garrison Officers called out. "Gate opens in thirty seconds!"
The gates then began to slowly open after those tense thirty seconds, the gate opened, letting light pour into the opening that had been created by lifting the only entrance to Wall Maria in that district.
"It's officially begun." Erwin started. "The 57th Recon Mission. ALL UNITS FORWARD!" He shouted as he led the charge out of the gate, the rest of the scouts following closely behind.
"This is it, time to find out who the traitors are!"