Thanks so much for reading! And reviewing, but more for the reading. :)

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"This is the house," Levi said to the group as they milled around the entrance to the hut. It was the only house with a kicked in doorway. But the room through the doorway was dark, dirty, and empty.

"Maybe they just left?" Eren said without conviction. He was covered in Titan blood, as the battle had been an intensive one, and four Titans were now slowly decomposing in their wake. There was a fifth and final one-armed one that they had put down just outside the village. It didn't look as though it had fed on anyone. The group was tired and decreased by two. Several of them hadn't gotten off their horses and just sat, waiting to move or for something to try and kill them. It was how scouts lived.

As days in the Scouting Legion went, today hadn't been one of the worst, but it wasn't great. At this point Levi was waiting for their luck to take a nosedive. Hide and seek would only exhaust them further.

"This isn't 'just left' dirt," Levi told Eren. "It's filth. The Titan couldn't have done this."

"So—"

"So, if they found someone who can move buildings and all the people in them, it's worth waiting for." Levi took stock of the sky, which was in the process of turning a nearly-fluorescent pink/red and darkening. "We'll spend the night here."

"Outside the outpost?" Eren said before he could stop himself.

"Titans won't stir until dawn, and we have the trees. Gowan," Levi addressed the second and the man broke away from the group. "Get the team up in the trees and fed." At least they had rations. Without rations, it would have been a very long night indeed. Gowan obeyed, though Eren lingered, looking puzzled.

"I thought we didn't have enough gas to—"

"I don't remember asking for your opinion, Jaeger."

And the team dispersed like tadpoles around a ripple, getting up into the trees were there was a modicum of safety. Levi took up a position on the roof of the hut. It was thatch, which wasn't really clean per se, but certain types of trees in the wood oozed a sap. He had discovered it one mission with Erwin and remembered that it took days for the stuff to wear off his hands. And even if it was only one kind of tree, he didn't yet know which kind, and it was easier on the whole to take position on the thatch roof, where you at least knew what you were dealing with.

And he was the corporal. He could do what he wanted.

He kept an eye on the slowly evaporating Titan on the far side of the village. Steam rose from its decomposing body until finally it got too dark to see. The sun went down. Levi began to feel the cold creep in. He had no intention of sleeping, but closed his eyes and waited and listened. Eventually, Armin would make the man bring the house back to where the house physically was.

That was how Armin worked. Even now, the blonde was probably in a panic about what the rest of the group would be doing or thinking about him and his damnable mission.

Around 4 a.m. by Levi's count, the hut returned to being a hut. The open doorway first ejected Ruther and Dange, the latter carrying the former, and then Armin. Beneath Levi, the hut went still and lifeless again. In the dark, Armin's voice carried like a night animal's call.

"We should take to the trees until morning. Levi-heichou will be back in the morning to check."

One of the boys, probably Dange, snorted.

"He will!" Armin said defensively. "I'm sure of it."

"They left us, Arlert," Dange said moodily and Levi heard him shift the weight of the moaning Ruther. "They're not going to come back for Ruther because they probably think he's already dead. And if they were fighting Titans, it's not like we have a lot of resources."

"I'm not dead!" Ruther said weakly.

"Yeah, yeah." Dange shifted position again. "Just use that thing the miracle man gave you. He said it would get us home, right?"

"He said it was limited and I'm not going to waste it on leaving here when the group could be coming back for us," Armin said. He was louder in his peevishness. That high, whiny tone would probably wake the others, Levi thought, but he was curious. "What's it going to look like if we show up at home and they're still out here? If they all get killed or something?" The voice trailed off, ashamed. "Doesn't Levi-heichou live by some kind of motto of… don't do anything you'll regret? Or something? Eren talked about it once…"

"Arlert, I'm tired, and I couldn't care less what our fearless shortstack thinks about anything. Give me the thing you got or I'll take it."

"Back off!"

Levi dropped off the roof. They both heard him – their voices dropped out of the air like stones, they went as silent as any scout should be able to but rarely did. Levi approached.

"You two idiots could wake Titans."

"Heichou!"

"You left your post," Levi said, addressing the spot of black space that should be where Armin was standing.

"I never left it! And-and he did fix Ruther."

Ruther gave another weak grunt from his slumped position against Dange's shoulder and muttered something about being sorry for falling out of the tree.

"Save it," Levi replied. This was a bad time to begin doling out second chances and Erwin would have an opinion on the insubordination. If he was lucky, Levi would get to carry it out. Ruther's idiocy had delayed them. Morning was coming and he had nine people in his care now.

No. Not nine. Seven. Two had been eaten. Knowing neither of the boys could see it, he passed a hand across his eyes and wondered how he had forgotten Tartan and Cameo's deaths already. Dying in service of Ruther's not dying and Armin's bad idea. Hardly far, but it was what it was.

"Did you learn anything?" he asked Armin. The blonde ducked his head, visible as a little more than a shadow in the dark.

"I can't say for sure yet, sir."

"Then wake the others. We'll get back to the outpost before morning." The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, almost a nimbus on Armin's blonde hair. Levi wanted to ask about the house that was and wasn't and was again, but it wasn't the time.

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Deadlines were being Armin's friend. Deadlines meant the corporal didn't have the time to kick the crap out of disappointing people and Armin was pretty sure he had been roundly disappointing.

They were on their way back through the forest at a fast clip. In the earlier battle, the Titans had ignored the horses and so everyone was able to ride out now, even Ruther, but they were travelling in clusters. To be more specific, one tight cluster, with only a couple of people at the perimeter keeping track of whether or not they were about to be attacked by Titans.

This was wrong.

"Where is Tartan?" Armin asked Eren, who was travelling alongside him. "He was the scout on the way here, right?"

Eren said nothing for a moment. Then: "… I wasn't fast enough."

"…Cameo?" Armin had noticed her absence as well and worried about it.

"She wasn't fast enough."

And who's fault was that? Armin thought dryly to himself. They wouldn't be here and they wouldn't be dead if it weren't for my little bad idea getting its day in the sun and for what?!

Eren had drawn off into his own Titan-slaughtering mental world as soon as Armin had stopped speaking. Probably thinking about the deaths of Tartan and Cameo and everyone who had gone before. Probably blaming the Titans.

When it should be me he's blaming. What was it all for? A trinket?

But it wasn't a trinket. Inside his uniform's pocket rode a device that could move you from one place to another just by thinking about it. It was beyond anything they had, or had heard of. And once he had decided on a destination, it would take him there, from anywhere, for as long as he had it. The transporter was all Max could give him in the way of remuneration for killing the Titan. It was based on the dial's design, the miracle man had told him, and it was all Max had been able to reverse-engineer. It would take the person who was touching it, plus whoever and whatever they were touching, to the specified location.

At the time, Armin had balked. "Can't it go anywhere else? We go all over the place, if it could—"

"I had to cure a wizard of a nasty congenital feather condition just to get that!" Max said, pointing irritably at the dial above the door. "Molting like you wouldn't believe and that only takes me to four. You take that and like it or I'll take it back."

Valerie had been insistent about Armin's taking the device, though he never seriously intended to leave it behind. She had insisted on a lot of things; his taking the device, their eating before they left, their swearing to get a good night's sleep somewhere and not to storm any castles… they were good people, people his grandparents would have been good friends with in an odd sort of way.

But what they had given him wasn't related to Titans. It definitely wasn't worth the two lives they had spent in acquiring it. Following the long night with the miracle couple and a panicking Dange, Armin wanted a hole to climb into and several hours of sleep and self-loathing, but that didn't look likely.

After an hour and a half's ride, the group reached the far side of the forest and rode into the morning. Gowan had spent the last half ten minutes riding around assigning people positions in a (still tightly clustered) travelling formation and they broke into it smoothly at Levi's signal. With two less people, they were spread thinly but still divided up into pairs.

Levi, at the head of the column, urged his horse into a gallop and the rest of them followed suit without knowing why. Armin didn't think about it, too busy watching for Titans on the horizon line.

"It's funny," he said to his companion, a heavy-set girl named Marla. "We're not going back the same way."

Marla shrugged. Armin looked back down at his reins, then fixated on the space between his horse's ears, trying not to wonder. "It means that we have a high probability of running into Titans. Did the Titans that attacked you yesterday come from that direction?"

She shook her head. "One surprised us – I was already fighting when the others showed up."

Well, that solved nothing. It especially didn't solve the question of why they were heading this way. Armin could see the map in his head – they would come to a deep canyon if they rode this way long enough. It would be three hours out of their route though and, while canyons were better for their 3D gear, they wouldn't be able to get the horses down the canyon wall for at least a couple more miles until they found a smooth enough incline.

Plus, canyons were a funnel for Titans. If they wandered in, they had serious trouble getting out again. A canyon would hide them from Titan eyes only at the risk of exposing them to Titans already trapped in the canyon's walls.

Yet Levi rode past every turning point until there was no doubt in Armin's mind that they were heading to the canyon.

Why? Something discussed with Erwin?

Did the corporal seriously think battling through an assortment of Titans for some affected safety of environment would be better than going home the normal way like normal people? They had already lost two people—almost three!

He tightened his grip on the reins, ready to ride over and ask Levi directly, but his back twinged with pain at the movement. His body wasn't through punishing him for the house battle the day before. Maybe he wouldn't antagonize it by fighting with the corporal right now.

Someone had spotted a Titan. They changed direction, still working their way towards the canyon.

"What do you think is going on?" Armin asked Marla, desperate to make some kind of conversation with somebody who wasn't Levi. Marla was bright, he had heard her talking animatedly to other recruits in the hall before, but she looked away. After a moment, she shrugged.

"I'm sure the corporal knows what he's doing," she said. Armin envied her. He envied anybody who could completely trust someone else with their life and not have to be outthinking them on a minute to minute basis, just to feel sane.

Another change in direction. More working their way towards the canyon.

"We're going to kill the horses," Armin said, mostly to himself. The hard ride certainly wouldn't prepare them for the breakneck fight for survival needed to get through the canyon.

"Hm?" Marla asked.

"…nothing," Armin said, quietly losing his mind with curiosity. The canyon was probably twelve miles off, if he was guessing correctly. Scout horses were built for endurance and speed, yes, they were still galloping, but no horse could gallop further than two or three miles.

The column slowed a couple of minutes later, much to Armin's relief. They had covered two miles in a worryingly short time. If they didn't run again anytime soon, it should be okay. Armin tried not to wonder why they had run at all. Maybe to avoid Titans, maybe to avoid a muddy section of the road that would have made them filthy. Who knew. Stop thinking about it.

Just keep riding.

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Sorry for the slowness (though I am sure the group appreciates not being attacked for Titans for at least a couple of minutes), things will pick up next chapter! Thank you for continuing to read!