Somebody please tell me if I use "corporeal" instead of "corporal". I realize it's hilarious, but it might, y'know, distract from the story and since I keep typing it, it might help to have outside help. :)
[An inability to spell corporal is not why I keep using heichou] [I just like how it sounds] [Levi-heichou] [now that I've done all this, I'm probably using it wrong too. xD Heichou-Levi? Levi-heichou?]
Also… I have no idea what foot size Eren has as a Titan. I couldn't find his height as a Titan either. Bah.
Anyway, story! :D
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After another hour alternating between trot and canter, the column stopped. Ahead of them yawned the canyon, perhaps seven meters (twenty-three feet) across and twenty meters (sixty-five feet) deep, if Armin remembered correctly. He breathed a sigh of relief as the horses were allowed to stop and graze and the scouts dismounted. They were exposed, but anyone who looked around would see a Titan a mile off on their flat, clear surroundings. The weather was with them, sunny and warm for this early in the spring and clear skies meant everyone felt safer.
Stopping after a hard ride was akin to a free-for-all break. Most of the scouts were eating, talking, and checking their gear, though Gowan had been assigned to officially watch for Titans. Levi was one of the first to dismount (leading to the break).
"Looks like Ruther's got some food," Marla said, sliding off her horse and handing off the reins to Armin, who was still mounted. "You aren't going to take a break?"
"Go ahead, I'll be a minute," Armin said, thought he could feel hunger gnawing at his stomach. The atmosphere around the Scouting Legion was tense. They were laughing and joking now as Ruther tried to keep back some of the snack (high quality chocolate that the miracle couple had given him); all the tenseness was nonverbal. Some hung back by their horses. Many were almost compulsively checking their gear.
Well, Armin thought resignedly as he dismounted. It could just be the noise.
Beneath the scouts' conversation, there was a hushed sound of great things moving at the bottom of the canyon. None of the Titans were tall enough to climb out of the canyon and were, when you stood anywhere but at the edge of the wall, altogether invisible. If not for the sound of movement, the scouts wouldn't know the Titans were there at all. They got a bit louder as the break went on, getting comfortable. Armin remained outside the group, listening to the chatter and to the Titans moving far below.
"How do you make this stuff?" Marla was asking Ruther, who shrugged.
"I dunno, you're a girl. How do you make this stuff?" he retorted.
"You're an idiot. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean-"
And it was a long, tangential argument. The corporal headed over to the edge of the canyon to assess their situation. Armin kept an eye on him because, in general, what leadership was doing was always more interesting than his comrades. Bar Eren and Mikasa, but they had been dragged into the 'chocolate-as-women's-work' argument. Mikasa apparently knew what went into it, but Eren remembered how to prepare it properly.
The canyon walls were sheer here. It wasn't a place they could lead the horses down and it wasn't a place Titans would climb out of due to their own volition. So the arm that came up out of the canyon was utterly outside the realm of expectation. It was nothing more than grasping fingers, at the very end of its reach, not even enough to haul itself out – but still it could trip Levi, pulling him forwards into the canyon.
No one was close enough to stop it. It was very quiet anyway. Gowan would see it in a second. Several of the scouts were facing the canyon, they would realize it and point so everyone could collectively panic. Armin remembered the second of not turning around when the Titan had grabbed Dange. He refused to relive that second.
It's pointless to throw yourself into the canyon, he's going to die and there are at least fifteen Titans down there, you know that, and you've killed maybe nine in your entire life and that was when you had HELP and what are you doing?!
- because he was already vaulting off the cliff edge towards the Titans below.
Levi had, in keeping with his reputation, somehow managed to cut the Titan's hand open at the palm by scissoring his blades and pulling the appendage apart in a spray of blood. This left Levi with no hands with which to control the 3D gear when the Titan dropped him. Levi went into a spinny, bladey ball of angry humanity. Nothing could get a grip on him during his descent. Armin didn't see him land. He imagined that the corporal left a verifiable crater when he hit the ground.
No deaths, Armin thought as he fought his way down, ducking the grasping hands and snapping mouths of jumping Titans. No deaths, no deaths, no deaths. There have already been two deaths, what are you, Krista? Stop trying to get yourself killed!
The first order of business, he thought, was to dismantle the huge Titan, looming like a solo tree over a meadow of smaller Titans. Imitating something he had once seen Levi do, Armin ran up the thing's outstretched arm, towards its open, elderly face (A bit like my grandfather), and sliced out the back of its neck with little more than a pang of guilt. It toppled backwards and squashed several of the smaller Titans beneath it on its way down.
Oh my God, Armin thought with sudden horror. He leapt to perch on the canyon wall and stared at the scene below. What if he fell on Levi? What if I just killed the corporal?!
Plummeting, he entered the Bad Part of the fight, the region where 'littler' Titans could reach and grab at him. It would only be worse once he got on the ground. The Titans would stop looking up and there would be no getting past them without entering again into the realm of hands and gently smiling faces. So thinking, he threw himself towards the ground. Suicidal speed would confuse them.
Something swatted him into the canyon wall.
Swatted. It was a term that shouldn't apply to humans. Flies, moths, non-human things.
Armin remembered, even as he flew backwards into the canyon wall, that he should brace himself and redirect the energy into a new, southernly diagonal. He didn't. The wall met him like a friend driving a speeding cart and now Armin was the one leaving a crater.
His head. His vision. The battle. HE became one with the wall, couldn't imagine leaving it, even as he slid/fell the remaining fifteen feet to the canyon floor. Somewhere high above, he heard Eren's Titan roar.
Ooh, swimmy, some part of his consciousness giggled. Eren's coming to save the day!
This was followed closely by: Yes, because Eren's so delicate when he's fighting, there's no way he'll stomp on us by accident in an incredibly narrow battleground.
Then: Can you move?
Mmm, probably. He flexed the fingers of one hand. While it took more effort than it usually did, they moved. So he could move. That was nice.
Can you move?
Armin wondered if he should be repeating things when he was talking to himself in his head. That didn't sound right.
"ARLERT. CAN YOU MOVE."
This was the canyon. There were Titans. There was no time for 'are you okays' or grand defensive gestures. He was down here, the corporal was alive, and Armin was being a burden rather than a help. Armin vaulted up into the Bad Part again without thinking about it. Helping. Helping. Helping!
Wait.
He had killed two Titans (which made three total), before he wondered if the corporal was even incapacitated. Maybe they could simply use the maneuver gear to climb out of here, instead of battling Titans. Armin half-turned to look back at Levi, thinking that he really should have done this before throwing himself into the fray. He couldn't see the corporal, so he started a descent back towards where Levi had been.
A hand swatted him down again.
This time Levi got him before he hit the ground. The corporal moved them both smoothly to one of the far walls and perched there, though the perching was more unsteady than the use of his gear. For that second, they were out of the way of the Titans.
"You have any idea how useless concussed people are to me?" Levi asked.
"Nnn?" Armin tried.
Levi swore. "Do you have enough gas to get out of here?"
Armin nodded. Being carried one-handed under Levi's arm, he had a pretty good view of the corporal's leg. It looked wrong. No. The stance looked wrong. Finally, he narrowed it down to the ankle looking wrong, and that made sense. Once something was injured once, it was easier to reinjure. Every old man telling you about how many times his knee/back/wrist/etc. had given out thanks to some old war wound was proof of that.
"Your—" Armin began. Levi dropped him, causing Armin to scramble to gain his footing on the wall.
"Good. Climb out of here," Levi said when Armin had stabilized.
"I'll follow—"
"Not enough gas."
"Then take—"
"I can't carry you up right now."
Armin got the feeling Levi secretly liked dealing with concussed people. It was easier to predict what they would say. But you didn't drop concussed people and expect them to recover like Levi just had. Armin looked over his shoulder at the cluster of Titans. A shadow had fallen over them and they were looking up, open-mouthed, at its source: a lanky Titan that dwarfed them by three meters at least, huge jaw open and bellowing for vengeance. Eren crashed onto the canyon floor and was curb-stomping the smaller Titans in seconds. The air was getting thick with steam from the decomposing huge Titan Armin had killed earlier. Soon, the Titans wouldn't be able to see for the steam of their own corpses.
"It's getting cloudy- we could run down the canyon!" Armin called to the corporal. Levi looked at him and, in a moment of weakness, actually looked exasperated. Armin realized half a second later why.
Yes, run with a busted ankle. Why not suggest sprouting wings, Armin?
Wings. Curing nasty congenital feather conditions. The transporter.
"Heichou!" Armin said, turning to tell Levi they were saved. No response. The corporal had launched into the battle, blades drawn. Armin stared, then realized the practicality of the action. If he was dead, Armin would have no choice but to head up and out. The steam would give Levi a decided edge until his gas ran out. There was no use counting on Eren – in the narrow dark of the canyon, the large Titan could barely move to fight, much less recognize them or reach down safely to pick anyone up.
Armin pushed off the wall, a blade in one hand and the transporter held in his mouth. He needed at least one hand free. The transporter was easy to use, according to the couple. You just decided on a destination and then hit the center button. Somehow, this released some stored up 'magical energy.' You just had to be touching the transporter, everything you wanted to take with you, and nothing you didn't.
That last would be tricky.
So would the second, come to think of it. Levi was short, but he was stronger than Armin. Some of that had to translate into weight. Armin might not be able to pull the older man off his course, once decided upon. Working his way around snatching hands, Armin made his way through the steam towards Levi, who was defending a position along the wall where many of the Titans Eren kneed in the head were being flung. It was about thirty feet up and easily the most treacherous place in the canyon right now.
The corporal spotted Armin coming. His resulting expression could have made thunderstorms think about a change in career.
"I told you-!" Levi shouted, leaping towards him. In the middle of the jump, the gear failed.
A flicker of panic as gravity asserted itself.
Embarrassment, or a glimpse of something that looked like it. Acceptance that this was how things ended.
Then falling.
Armin recognized his chance. He shot forward and grabbed Levi under the arm (nearly impaling himself on a still-drawn blade in the process) and used the downward momentum to balance Levi's weight. It worked. They were falling together, not touching anything. Armin lodged his blade's hilt hurriedly in the crook of his arm, took the transporter out of his mouth, and – a Titan hand came at them from above.
Moving by instinct, Levi pushed off from Armin and stabbed upwards with both of his blades, puncturing the hand at the palm, then scissored the weapons outwards. A brief shower of blood and the hand fell apart.
Now they were in separate freefall. Armin had felt something break in the gear when Levi kicked off him to attack. It wasn't worth the time it would take to check it and find out it was broken.
Instead, he lashed out at the nearest Titan who swatted at him, like Levi, as a matter of instinct rather than intent. The trajectory was perfect. Armin crashed into Levi at speed, hit the transporter button, and they flew across a wooden room and slammed into the far wall. Regrettably, it was made of thick wood and did not break, so both of them laid on the floor a while.
The transporter transitioned people from war to peace with incredible speed. It was hard to process and it was the second time in twenty-four hours that Armin had had to do so. The corporal's eyes were open, though he hadn't pushed himself up yet, and seemed to be assessing what he could see from his current vantage point (i.e. the floor).
"Where are we," Levi asked.
"The outpost," Armin replied. His shoulder hurt. He had been leading with it when he was introduced to the wall, so it kept sending him little missives of pain, like notes from shoulder hell.
"It was the thing I got from the miracle man," he continued meekly. "I thought it was the best for humanity, sir."
"What?"
"If you lived. I thought it was best for humanity if you lived." And that's why I disobeyed orders, he added mentally. Again.
"Where else does it go." Levi began to get up with what was apparently his usual method: tucking his feet beneath him then straightening. The moment he put weight on the weak ankle, he staggered.
"Sir—" Armin began.
"Answer the question." The corporal had gotten to his feet, using the wall as an aid.
"It can only go here. It only has, uh, 'magic' enough for one designated destination and this was… where we needed to be. I thought."
Levi was silent, mulling this over. Armin felt his head drifting towards a long vacation in the valley of sleep, where notes from his shoulder would come back as undeliverable mail.
"What are you doing here?" asked Erwin's voice and there was surprise in it. You didn't often get surprise from Erwin.
Armin found that he was on his feet and saluting, though he didn't remember getting there or deciding to salute. His shoulder barked orders at him to put his (expletive expletive expletive) hand down.
Erwin continued ."I didn't know you were back."
"We're… not," Levi said, and Armin could hear him fighting around the logical quandaries of the statement. "Arlert has a device that got us out of the canyon, but deposited us here. It can't go back though. With a fresh horse, I –"
"Denied. How many of your team are out of gas?"
"Four," Levi said. "Five, counting me. We were going to skirt the canyon on the way back and lure any Titans that found us into it."
"Gowan?"
"Knows enough to come back here and carry out the plan."
Erwin nodded. Then, as if noticing him for the first time: "Arlert, stand down."
The moment his legs unlocked, his knees buckled, and he found himself kneeling. It was deeply embarrassing, though neither Levi or Erwin commented on the breach of protocol or Armin's following struggle to get upright again. They continued discussing what was to be done about the missing forces and things that had been happening since they parted ways.
Armin stood again and saluted.
"Levi-heichou!" he said, interrupting. To his shame, he felt a hot stinging at the corners of his eyes. He was afraid of this answer. He was afraid of this question.
"Arlert," Levi said guardedly.
"Have their sacrifices been useful to humanity?" Armin asked. It felt like he was speaking very loudly. He hoped he wasn't yelling. It was hard to think with the pain in his shoulder and volume control was connected to thinking. The two men surveyed him in silence.
"Yes, Arlert," Levi said.
Armin refused to collapse again and let the wave of relief – though that wasn't quite the right word – pass over him. He bowed his head in acknowledgement and used the moment to force all the tears back to where they had come from. When he looked up again, Levi looked about to say something. The corporal looked at Armin's face for a moment and dismissed the question.
"That weak body won't hold up for much longer without food and sleep."
"Yes, heichou."
"Go get them."
As he left the building, Armin clearly heard Erwin say firmly: "No, I was serious, you're not getting a horse. If I find you taking one, I'll break your other foot and take your gear. Gowan will get them back."
Silence.
#
With apologies for the length. And for a possibly out-of-character Erwin. I hope this is still moderately amusing.
