Okay so now y'all are caught up to me posting chapters in real time. Updates will not be in 20+ chapter chunks anymore.
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The hallway they stepped into was empty and slightly shabby, the same as the rest of the building. There were only two doors which made finding #3B very simple. Mikasa hesitated a moment to take a deep breath before knocking. The lack of immediate response caused all of them to shift uncomfortably as they waited. When the door opened suddenly Jean ended up jumping and bumping into Krista, nearly toppling her over and earning a glare from Ymir.
"Well hello there! Come in, come in." Hanji beckoned them into the apartment and shut the door behind them before turning back to them and sticking out their hand. "I'm Dr. Scientist, the one over on the couch is Nose, Commander Handsome is the one over by the table, and Hawk is in the kitchen making some tea but he should be out in a moment."
Mike got up from the couch to shake all of their hands and not-so-surreptitiously sniff them. All of them shifted away uncomfortably as he did so. Erwin came over as well after a moment and came to shake their hands as well and much to their relief did nothing more than that.
"I can tell who Red Scarf is." Erwin inclined his head at Mikasa. "But unfortunately I'm not certain as to the rest of your identities."
"I'm The Hunter. I'm an expert marksman with a bow."
"I'm Historia and I'm telekinetic."
"Savage Dancer, shapeshifting."
"Um, I'm Connie and I live with Sasha."
"And I'm Jean and I drove us all here." Both Connie and Jean shifted uncomfortably but nobody remarked on their lack of hero status. Erwin simply frowned slightly but nodded in acknowledgement nonetheless.
"You don't cover your face at all?" Hanji was looking at Ymir, intrigued by her choice.
"My face is unrecognizable when I transform. Unfortunately I also have claws over four inches long which would make this little meeting a bit of a pain in the ass."
"Fair enough. Oh, and here's Hawk!" Levi had just walked out of the kitchen holding a steaming mug of tea. His eyes flicked over to the six of them.
"What they said. I have ears so don't introduce yourselves again, let's just get to this." He put his mug down on the table as everyone else walked over. Mikasa looked torn between wanting to punch him for being rude and wanting to thank him for being so focused on the task at hand.
"So what have you figured out since we spoke earlier?" Mikasa was addressing Hanji directly.
"I got a larger partial on the plate. Three confirmed digits and one that's a toss-up between two letters. Nose and Hawk went out to take a look at the site almost immediately after you called. It was only a quick look, but there wasn't much to get really." Hanji nodded at the both of them and Mike picked up where they left off.
"A decent amount of time passed since Eren and Marco were taken, but there was a lingering smell of chloroform. Whoever it was who grabbed them touched the lamp post behind the van. It doesn't tell us much besides that they used chloroform though. Hawk is the one who actually found something useful." Mike jerked his head at Levi.
"When they made their getaway they scuffed their bumper against the car in front of them. There wasn't a lot to get a sample of, but it's a start." Levi shrugged and Hanji jumped in to continue talking.
"Our kidnappers took the badges off their van, but a lot of car manufacturers have specific types of paint. The fact that we have such a small sample makes it a bit more difficult but a friend is running it to see if we can pin down who the manufacturer is. We're hoping it's a less-common type of paint."
"Which means," Erwin broke in to complete the circle of conversation, "if we can narrow down it down to a more specific manufacturer and combine that with almost a half-partial of their license plate number, we'll be in very good shape. Even just having three definite digits does put us in decent shape even if unmarked white vans are very common. Speaking of… Hanji, when do you think Nifa will have the results for the partial plate search?"
"She said probably tonight but she warned me that we shouldn't get our hopes up. We all know how common white vans are and who's to say that it wasn't registered as being green and then repainted with after-market generic paint."
"My guess is that it's a rental." Everyone turned to look at Sasha as she let her gaze fall to the floor and chewed at her right thumb as she voiced her thoughts. "If they stole it then the vehicle is already is already flagged in the system. They don't want to draw attention to themselves so they'd be driving like saints to begin with but it only takes one overzealous cop to completely mess things up for them. And if they own the van there's some tie to them so I highly doubt they'd do that." Hanji nodded and scribbled down some notes before speaking.
"Yeah, they'll probably have either rented it for either a couple hours – so just long enough to kidnap them and stash them somewhere – or they've got it rented for way longer to keep the van out of sight while we're trying to look for it. If it has an easily identifiable type of paint though we might be able to figure out where it came from." Erwin unrolled a map and placed in down on the table and continued to speak while Levi and Mike moved to weigh down the corners.
"We've already begun to formulate a plan for how we move forward once we have the results. This isn't as detailed as I'd like, but our holograph table is at our headquarters. We're drawn a perimeter for where they could have gotten to within a certain time period." He pointed at the color coded outlines drawn over a map of Trost and its outlying areas. "This blue is how far they could have gotten in roughly fifteen minutes. If we can map out enough points within that area we might be able to figure out a rough trajectory. The red lines encompass the possible distance they could have traveled by the time Mikasa spoke with us, which was roughly forty-five minutes later. As you can see, that already includes areas beyond the northern border of Trost at which point they would be on the highway."
"It's just after 4.30 now. It's been over two hours." Mikasa's voice was quiet.
"However, the red area doesn't reach all the way to the southern part of Trost." Erwin pointed at the southern region. "Getting there would have taken about an hour given the traffic in some areas. If we can figure out a rough trajectory in the first fifteen minutes we might be able to rule out them heading too far out of Trost." Hanji made a frustrated noise causing everyone to look at them.
"I've already said that it's too much work to try and track the van via security camera footage. It took only a couple blocks before I lost it completely at an intersection. It's unmarked, so one corner with a blind spot and we've lost it. It's just too much work and it's not something you can have multiple people working on."
"A human couldn't follow it." Jean gave Mikasa a pointed look. "But an AI could do it."
"Would you be comfortable with us bringing in our AI? Armin might be a little slow since he'd be accessing everything remotely, but he'd be faster than a person would. We wouldn't lose anyone that way either?"
"I forgot you had an AI." Hanjii was grinning excitedly now. "Okay, that changes things completely. We'll put him on that task, that's perfect! But why would he be slow?"
"He's not complete. Marco finished the code to the point where he could be turned on, but he's technically not finished, he was going to do a huge overhaul after graduation when he had more time."
"Even if he isn't complete that's still impressive. Who's Marco though? I'd definitely like to meet him."
"He's the one who got kidnapped with Eren." Jean was openly glaring at Hanji. "So if you want to have a chat with him you should probably get on –"
A phone started ringing loudly, cutting off Jean. Everyone looked confusedly at one another until all eyes came to rest back on Jean's bright red face.
"Sorry I forgot to... Fuck." Jean picked up the phone in a panic and rise in volume as he spoke. "Mrs. Bodt! Hi um… yeah Marco isn't… he isn't with me he's uh… I'm not…"
Erwin silently held out his hand for the phone and Jean passed it off to him and looking like he was going to throw up.
"Hello, Mrs. Bodt? This is Commander Handsome…" Erwin walked into the next room and shut the door behind him.
"Marco's mom is probably going out of her mind. She completely freaked out when we were fifteen and his phone died while we were out getting ice cream. I can't imagine how she's going to take this. Though I guess she'll be a bit less of a nervous wreck knowing that the Survey Corps is involved?" Jean turned to Mike, Hanji and Levi and gave them a halfhearted smile that Mike returned.
"Hopefully."
They stood around, listening to the buzz of Erwin's voice in the neighboring room and waiting for him to return. Mikasa and Hanji had moved off to the side to start linking Armin into their system so that he could begin searching through the data that they had. When Erwin walked back through the door everyone turned immediately to look at him.
"I told them the bare minimum about what's going on and assured them that we're doing all that we can to retrieve Eren and Marco. In the future, turn off your cellphones before any meetings." He returned Jean's (now powered-down) phone to him before straightening up and addressing everyone. "As soon as we have any results on the license plate number or the paint sample I want everyone to get moving. How many of you would be available immediately?"
"I just got cleared to return to hero work by Armin recently. I'm free whenever."
"My course work is pretty light at the moment, so unless I have class I should be free. That means we might have to drop our evening patrols on short notice though, doesn't it?" Sasha's face was slightly troubled. Erwin frowned before responding.
"Unfortunately, yes. Savage Dancer and Historia, are the both of you free?"
"I only work part time as a taxi dispatch, but the day shifts are pretty easy to get someone to cover for." Ymir shrugged.
"And I work at a café. The manager really likes me so I could probably get away with ducking out for a 'family emergency' if I had to. Being small and blond has its advantages."
"Good, you can all get Dr. Scientist's number from Red Scarf but if we could get all of yours before you left, we would appreciate that."
"So there isn't anything we can do?" Connie's body was tense as he looked at Erwin. "They're our friends too."
"When we have leg work that needs to be done you might be able to help. Other than that –"
"You'd be getting in the way." Levi's tone was matter of fact. In spite of the furious looks that Connie and Jean were giving him he continued. "If you don't have any powers or abilities or anything you might end up running into some shit and we can't spare people to save your asses too."
The glares that Levi received from Mike and Hanji had him ducking his head down to stare at his now-empty mug of tea. There was an awkward beat of silence before everyone started moving again to trade contact information. Connie and Jean stood glumly off to the side and Jean shot a murderous glare (that was ignored) at Levi as they regrouped to leave. None of them spoke to one another until they were back in the car.
Connie ended up being the one to break the silence.
"So wow, The Hawk lives up to his reputation of 'complete asshole' doesn't he?"