"Oh, this is so, so, so exciting!" Hange Zoe pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her long nose from where they had slipped as she fidgeted in her seat. "This is such an opportunity for so many, especially for the young people—I can't wait to see what kind of soldiers they turn out to be! This is the opportunity and the adventure of a lifetime for them—aren't you just so excited?" she finished breathlessly, stopping only for air. Levi put a finger to her lips before she could relaunch into her manic monologue.

"I wasn't excited yesterday. I wasn't excited five hours ago when we started this shitty-ass process. I don't know why you think that there's a chance that I may be excited now, unless you mean excited that we are almost done...in which case I am absolutely thrilled."

Commander Erwin had learned, though it had taken quite a bit of trial and error (largely error) over the course of several years, that Levi was incredibly difficult to punish. The captain viewed most aspects of daily life as a chore, so putting him to work did little to change his demeanor; he was fastidious in his personal habits, so turning him loose with a mop for hours was basically a reward. He wasn't even particularly easy to discipline—though diminutive, Levi was a powerful athlete...far from invincible, but a smoother operator than Erwin had hoped for in the face of compulsory exertion. Such feats were likely fueled more by defiance than rote physicality. Running laps—a military favorite—did nothing: Levi would finish, choking for air, and he would still look at Erwin with iron in his eyes. Training for the next set, Levi would call it, and Erwin would return to his office, kicking himself the whole way back for thinking that the most recent set could have ended any differently than the one that had came before it. Sticking him in a room with Hange, on the other hand...well, it was clever of the commander if he had wanted Levi to pay his dues.

A deep bond of trust existed between Levi and a handful of the Scouting Legion's top officers—a bond forged in a trail of blood and grief and primal fear. In importance, that bond came before any horse, swordplay, or omnidirectional maneuver; it was the beginning and the end of every act in the field. Hange, however, also managed to retain all of the qualities of an expensive spice: unusual and interesting, but best in small doses.

The woman was already prattling again; Levi tried to gather his thoughts back into his head and tune into what she was saying. He found it to be a challenge; she was only part of the many things that had exhausted his brain that day, though a very large part none the less.

"Hey—" he said, and to his surprise and relief, she stopped talking and looked at him with the eager intent of someone standing on the cusp of a great adventure. He leaned back in his chair; his back cracked with stiffness. "Let's review."

"Well," said Hange, and as she reached across the tabletop to seize the smallest of three stacks of paperwork, an overly-enthusiastic stray elbow caught the rim of a coffee mug and sent its contents sloshing over the other side of the desk.

"...and there goes my last bit of liquid sanity," Levi grumbled.

"...and also the hot seat. Whoops...sorry there, little chair—" Hange apologized brightly to the straight-backed wooden chair opposite them, the seat of which was now occupied by a steaming puddle. She rifled through the paperwork. "Well, there's Mr. Ponytail."

"That's Eld Shin."

"Yeah, that guy..."

"Keen strategist, athletic, more mature than that shitty up-do suggests...he graduated at the top of his class, too."

"Huh..." Hange squinted. "Yeah, that's true. Why didn't he join the Military Police, then?"

"Probably because he's an idiot..."

"Why would you pick him if you think that there's a good chance that he's an idiot?"

"If he's an idiot, then maybe he'll give me an excuse to send him back to whatever slop bucket that he came from sooner rather than later."

"Oh, ye of so little faith..."

"Why does everyone keep talking about having faith like it is the best thing that you can possibly have? I'd rather just have a good steak."

"What's that?" said Hange, blinking. Her dark eyes were unfocused behind her glasses.

Levi snorted. "Forget it. You can't read and think at the same time." He shook his head, willing his brain to reengage. "Who's next?"

"There's the guy named...Gunther Schultz. He seemed pretty plain. You liked him."

"'Liked' is a strong word for 'didn't find intolerable'."

"Well, it's a start," Hange said briskly, undeterred. "So what is it about him that you find so tolerable?"

"He's got some grit," Levi replied slowly, picking his words carefully to avoid any gratuitous compliment. "He's killed seven Titans by himself and that's before you factor in what's been done as a team. He's judgmental, which is probably why he's not dead yet. There's a temper, but I can live with that if he's...constructive with it. If I'm going to have to babysit, I'm not babysitting princesses."

"That's...fair," Hange agreed. "Anyhow...I only said that Schultz was plain. Honestly, it's that other guy that I really don't like."

"Do you have a problem with everyone or is it just the ones that don't piss me off?"

"No, no, Mr. Ponytail was okay; I just think...that guy's a cocky bastard."

Levi lifted his gaze to examine Hange's skeptical face. "If any shitty brat that the Scouts have scrounged up in the last seven years has earned my begrudging respect, Oluo Bozado has."

"He's..." Hange waved her hands as though looking to grab the words for exactly what Bozado was out of the air between them. "He's so rude," she finished, exasperated.

"I know," said Levi. "He's also a shoe-in. He has exceptional combat skills—and the highest solo kill rate in the military."

"That's not including you, though."

"No, it's not."

Hange snorted. "Always modest..."

"Yeah, well, I'm a lot of things but a liar isn't on that list."

"He's old," Hange persisted with a tone of desperation.

"So am I."

"I don't like him."

"I don't, either."

"You don't like anyone; it doesn't count."

"Tch..." Levi sniffed, reaching to pick up his coffee before remembering that it had been unceremoniously emptied for him.

Hange was skimming the files before her again, eyes traveling across each page rapidly. "You know..." she said, squinting behind her glasses. "There's not a lot here on any of them, but I can tell you this: none of these guys are anything like you."

Levi snorted derisively. "If I wanted more of me, it would probably be easier for me to cut myself in half and be in two places at once than to turn one of this lot into anything resembling the sort."

"Someone's grumpy," said Hange, shaking her head.

"You spilled my coffee."

"You don't even really drink coffee."

"I need it. I'm having a particularly unpleasant day."

Hange gave a bark of laughter; this one did not extend to her dark brown eyes. "How can it possibly be unpleasant? Nothing has even tried to kill you yet."

"Monotony has. I kill Titans, Hange. I don't sit on my ass, I don't push papers, and to prevent distemper, one must not expect me to run my mouth to people on the other side of a desk for five fucking hours."

Hange sighed. "You lot think that I'm the crazy one—and here you sit complaining about the closest thing to a day off that you've seen in God knows how long." She looked up from the files. Her expression was hard to read. Levi became very preoccupied with something outside the window where the late afternoon sunlight was flooding the streets of the capitol.

They didn't speak for a time. Hange read and re-read the paperwork on the three men, occasionally scratching something into the margins. Levi alternated between picking at his nails and resisting the urge to doze. It was very warm in the office; his brain was feeling fuzzy again. Unsurprisingly, Hange was the one to break the silence.

"I don't understand, though."

"Hmm...?"

"I don't understand why you're interviewing them."

"It's not complicated," Levi said. "If they're flying through the air in training, then I don't know how unbelievably annoying they are. I have to live with these people. I'm responsible for them; I'm supposed to keep them alive rather than strangle them all in their beds. I can take one of Oluo, maybe, but no more than that. I can see what they are without actually watching them do it...that's what we do the mountains of paperwork for. I'm more concerned with who they are."

"Does that really mean...?" Understanding dawned on Hange's face. "You've been tasked with leading the top squad in the military and you're picking them all based on their military history and a fifteen-minute conversation alone. That's it."

"That's basically it," said Levi, lazily flicking a spot of lint from his thigh. "Given time, I can fix incompetence. I can't fix complete idiocy."

Hange's disbelieving response was cut short by a rising clamor outside the door on the opposite side of the room—the sound of several pairs of boots echoing in the tiled hall beyond.

"I think that the break is over," Hange said, still looking slightly rattled. "It sounds like the rest of the candidates are back...are you ready to pick the last one?"

Levi shook his still-foggy head. "Send in whoever's next."

"'Whomever', you mean...bring us the next victim!" she called, and the noise outside the door halted as abruptly as it had begun. "At least try to look excited, if you can," Hange added quietly. "Regardless of how arbitrary and half-assed your whole process is, this is supposed to be exciting."

"I don't see what's so exciting," Levi responded idly. "It's been the same thing over and over again. I can already tell you exactly what is going to happen. Someone is going to walk through that door in thirty seconds. They are going to be male, younger than me, at least a head taller—probably blonde," he added. "He is going to sit down on the other side of this table, wide-eyed and singing my praises—probably including something about how I was his hero as a child, just to make me feel that much older—and I'm going to have to sit here for at least ten minutes and pretend to care about everyth—"

He was interrupted by the creak of the heavy wooden door; someone stepped into the room. Levi didn't see their face at first because his eyes were looking expectantly a good foot over where they should have been fixed to accomplish such a feat. Three things were immediately evident, however, once his gaze settled on the newcomer: they weren't male, they definitely weren't particularly tall, and they weren't even blonde.

Hange said something and Levi wasn't listening again. His interest was piqued; the heavy, fuzzy feeling in his dead had dissipated very suddenly—not because he saw a particularly promising candidate before him, but because his life had been a haze of monotony for hours and, well...something new was something new.

"Who're you?" he said, and the words came out a lot more roughly than he had meant for them to. Damn it; I'm tired.

The girl opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She swallowed hard and tried again, and Levi was surprised at the strength behind her voice when she spoke. He'd been expecting some small, shy thing.

"Petra Ral, sir—" she said, and she slung one fist behind her back and the other over her heart.

Levi nodded. "Come in. I'm not going to bite—despite whatever the Hell it is that they're saying out there."

Petra Ral's face broke into a wide smile as she approached the desk. Her features were soft; her strides were long and comfortable.

"Don't sit there," said Levi quickly as the girl made to pull out the chair. "Someone who wasn't me lost track of their elbows."

The girl blinked. Her eyes were amber like a cat's. "Um, okay—" she said, and she stood before the desk expectantly, still smiling, though her expression had become one of polite confusion—one eyebrow wasn't quite level with the other.

"Ral, was it?" Hange asked, pushing folders across the desk.

"Yes, Section Comma—"

"Why're you here?" Levi interrupted.

If the girl was surprised, she didn't show it as she shifted her unblinking gaze from the woman to the man before her. "I want to be a member of the new Special Operations Squad under your command, Captain Levi. I'm confident that my skill set is proficient for something as specific as this position requires and that my previous experiences have prepared me sufficiently to fill such an important role."

Just when you think you've found something that isn't boring, it proves you wrong, Levi thought derisively. He crossed his arms. "That's nice. A shit ton of people have shown up today who are confident, proficient, experienced...why should I take you?

"I'm a good solider, sir."

"Why are you good?"

"...because I have to be if I don't want to die."

There was something about her tone, he realized suddenly; her words may be bland and well-rehearsed but something was not quite right. Levi narrowed his eyes to examine the face in front of him for the first time—really looked at it, studying its soft edges openness and brightness. She was so young, he realized: he hadn't seen it at first, but in front of him was a child that spoke like—sounded like—a combat veteran...someone who had seen Hell on Earth and not let it take the light from their eyes.

"Let me see that," Levi said, snatching Ral's file directly from Hange's hands without waiting for permission. He skimmed it, looking for a specific section and when he found it, a particular piece of information jumped off of the page at his tired eyes. He looked up at the girl, then down at the page, then back up again. Surely that isn't correct. There are house cats more imposing than she is. She looks strong, but she's so damn small...

"It says here that you've killed thirty-something Titans in team efforts."

"That's correct."

"...at your age?"

A glance that flitted like a bird: "That's correct, Captain."

Levi sat up somewhat straighter in his chair. "Tell me about yourself," he said, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward.

Petra Ral did not lean away.