The five of them were sitting together when Hanji's cellphone began to ring. It startled them out of their discussion about what they were eating for dinner; Mike and Nanaba were insisting on pizza while Erwin, Hanji, and Levi were arguing for Vietnamese food.
"Were you expecting a call? I didn't think Moblit or Nifa would have anything for us so quickly?" Erwin was looking at Hanji's phone as it vibrated a tap dance across the table.
"No, it's not a number I recognize. I'll let it go and see if they leave a voice mail." There was only a brief pause after it stopped ringing before it started again. "Well that's rude."
"Pick the damn thing up Hanji." A concerned look had settled across Mike's face. "Something's wrong."
Hanji stared at Mike for a moment in surprise and their cell phone started ringing for a third time. Hanji frowned at the number before picking up.
"Hello, who –" Hanji was immediately cut off by the person on the other end.
"Is this someone from the Survey Corps? I think you're supposed to be Dr. Scientist?" The voice coming from the phone was pitched high and panicked. "I'm Red –I'm Eren's sister. I need your help, Eren is missing."
Dead silence hung over the table.
"This is Dr. Scientist – Hanji. We're all listening on speaker, please tell us what happened. Are you sure that something has happened to Eren?"
"Eren was on his way to class but he never showed up." Levi snorted loudly.
"It's not our fucking problem if your brother decides to skip class."
"Armin –our AI – tracks the location of Eren's phone which Eren keeps on him at all times. Even when the phone itself is dead, the tracker will emit a faint but traceable signal for a couple more hours. The entire signal disappeared all at once today and all of our friends have already helped to try and find him. We also discovered that another of our friends is missing as well."
The five of them all exchanged glances and Hanji immediately stood up to walk the short distance to their work station, hands at the ready and hovering over the keyboard.
"You have our attention." Erwin's voice was calm and focused. "What was his last known location?"
"Pine St. between 103rd and 104th. There's a café nearby that we all go to a lot."
Hanji's fingers were already flying across the keyboard, pulling up aerial and street view maps as they began to search for any security cameras they could potentially tap into.
"What time did you lose track of his signal?" Hanji was yelling so that their voice was audible to Mikasa.
"It was 2.13pm."
"And you're sure of the time and location?"
"Armin taps into a sophisticated satellite network. I know it's not entirely le –"
We don't give a shit." Levi interrupted Mikasa abruptly. "What else do you have?"
"Well our friends –some of whom are also heroes – already checked all of the usual places that he might be normally since the last time this happened it turned out he dropped his phone in a fish tank." Mike snorted and tried to cover it up with a cough. "But another friend of ours who he was having lunch with disappeared as well. We don't have the ability to access his phone and track it but you might."
"I think I've got something!" Hanji's voice rang out, full of excitement. All eyes turned to them. "It's not much but it's a start. There's a van obstructing the closest security camera's view, but at 2.06pm Eren and another boy – dark hair, slightly taller – passed behind the van and were followed by a blonde woman. When the van drives away at 2.12pm they're no longer there. Eren doesn't seem like the kind of person to not know the Stranger Danger song so I would put money on neither of them getting into that van willingly."
"Is there a license plate number? Anything useful?" Mikasa's voice was strained.
"I don't have a good view of the plate at this angle. I'll check a few other cameras in the area to see if those caught a better angle. All I've got is that their plate number starts with P and is followed by what I'm pretty sure is an 8, but there's a chance it could be a B. There are a hell of a lot of white vans out there and this one doesn't have any distinguishing marks on it. This is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Even if we get a full view of the plate, it would still take hours to track it down." Hanji paused and grimaced. "If this is the best I can do this is going to take days. It's already almost 3pm and if they've already taken them outside of Trost…"
Hanji trailed off and there was only staticky silence on the other end of the phone. There was the sound of a shaky inhale before Mikasa spoke again.
"Whatever you need to do to find Eren, do it. If you need extra man power you have me and three of our friends who are also heroes. I don't know if you would know them but we're friends with The Hunter, Historia, and Savage Dancer."
"You're all Eren's age?" Nanaba was making a pained face, the concern carrying over to her voice.
"And all of us have been on the streets patrolling for at least two and a half years now." Mikasa's tone was snappish. "I was attacked by the Titans a month ago and now they've taken my brother and a close friend of ours. I'm not about to sit back watch – none of us are." Nanaba's face still looked pained, but she leaned back in her seat and nodded in silent assent.
"We accept, but we have conditions." Erwin's tone made it clear that he would brook no attempts to negotiate.
"What are your conditions?" Mikasa's voice was tight and she was clearly gritting her teeth as she spoke.
"We take point on the search and strategizing the rescue. Of course we will keep you in the loop, but we would prefer things to not get muddied. I believe I'm correct in assuming that we have more experience in these sorts of situations than you do."
"You'll keep us informed and include us in your plans? Include us in the search?" Mikasa's voice was suspicious.
"As best as possible. If we have to move quickly we might have to contact you as we move out. Ideally this will not be the case, but there's a chance it will happen. And yes, we will include you in the search. Please understand that this means taking directions from us." Erwin's voice was gentle but firm.
"Fine."
"Is this phone number the best way to contact you? We'll be reaching out again in the next hour."
"Yes."
"Thank you for trusting us to help."
"I don't think we have any choice at this point."
There was a click as Mikasa hung up abruptly.
"Charming."
"Levi, her brother was just kidnapped." Hanji's tone was stern and glared as their eyes met. He broke his gaze away first and leaned back in his seat, his face blank.
"Mike, what does your nose tell you?" Erwin was staring at him intently.
"Danger. A lot of danger. We need to be careful – for everyone's sake."
Nanaba's body was still tense as she put out her hand to intertwine it with Mike's. She looked down and frowned at their hands, lost in thought. Mike turned to face her and squeezed her hand, she looked up to meet his concerned look with a weak smile.
"Gross. Save the lovey-dovey couple shit for later." Nanaba and Mike both glared at Levi; he raised his hands in a gesture of apology and leaned further back into his seat. Nanaba rolled her eyes at him but her face quickly became serious again.
"They're children." Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"All of them are heroes. Young, yes; but not stupid and not inexperienced. It's entirely their choice and we need to face the reality of this situation. We all know that Hanji was giving an ideal estimate, not necessarily a realistic one. We need the man power." Erwin's voice was soft and he met all of their eyes in turn. "This is hardly my first choice, but right now I think it may be the only good one."
Silence settled over their group again as they lost themselves in their own thoughts. Levi was starting to get up to make some tea when Hanji began to speak, their tone tentative.
"I just might have a better partial on the license plate. I don't think I'm going to get much better than this. It would be a waste of time to try and focus on getting something more exact than this before we begin to run a search."
"When you say 'partial' how partial do you mean?" Erwin's brow furrowed deeply as he spoke.
"I already said the plate starts with a P and I can say pretty definitively that it's followed by an 8 and then a 3. Given the angle I can't be certain about the fourth. I'd give it a fifty-fifty chance between it being an L or a D. It's only half of a plate, but it's better than nothing."
"You can't do any better?"
"I wish I could Erwin, but it would be a waste of time. I'm going to start with this and I can continue to look through security camera feeds but it hit a lot of traffic and then a blind spot. I'd be sifting through ten different feeds just to find out where it might have gone next. That's time that I could be spent trying to track down more leads. What do we want to guess at so I can prioritize? Titans or the MP?"
"What do your instincts say, Mike?" He disentangled his hand from Nanaba's to scratch at his stubble.
"We haven't seen or heard a damn thing that was concrete about the Titans since the first time they caught Eren. We've only got unreliable information from that MP guy Levi brought in and a few informants say that they're almost nonentities since Smiles died. She's the one who had her little gang terrorizing parts of the city. They've kept a low profile since then. Nothing out of the ordinary; drug deals with the syndicates, whispers about the recent bank heist being tied to them, but nothing really concrete. I've tapped out all my contacts' information. Even Skunks won't talk for money." Mike looked over at Levi. "You've been doing night recon down in the warehouse district and at the docks. Anything interesting?"
"Like you said: they're dealing with the syndicates. If they had anything to do with the heist then that's probably why they're suddenly more active there."
"You've been watching major drug deals going down and you haven't done a thing, Levi?" Nanaba's voice was exasperated.
"I told him to take a hands-off approach. Engage only if absolutely necessary." Erwin gave her an apologetic look.
"I don't even know if they're actually a part of the Titans or just fucking middle men. Honestly, I don't even know if they're buying drugs. There hasn't been much of a rise in street activity so they might be dealing in something else entirely."
"You've been down there regularly the past few nights. If you had to hazard a guess that as to what they're buying besides drugs what would it be?" They were all looking intently at Levi.
"Weapons. A lot of weapons."
.
The likelihood that I will get to mention this in the super near future is minimal, so I'm going to just give you a quick blurb about Moblit and Nifa.
Hanji went to college with the both of them. They are the SC's contacts with the Trost police department. Nifa works in the crime scene lab so she has access to all of the databases and can give them information about autopsies and what the police find at crime scenes and the SC can feed her information in return (e.g. check for xyz thing that is the signature of a specific group or w/e). Moblit works as a detective so he can give them information about what the police are doing on the streets and let the SC know if there are any administrative change-ups happening. Similar to their relationship with Nifa, they can let him know if they think anything big is about to go down at the street-level or whatever.
I'm not sure how much they'll actually be showing up though which is a bummer because I love Moblit.