Still no smut, unfortunately, however I am absolutely positive it will be in the next chapter. Furthermore, I know this chapter took a little longer than usual to get out, and its relatively short so I really don't have an excuse. Eren gets eaten and Annie finds out. Enjoy!
Eren thought back to the promise he made Annie. I will find you when this fight is won, he had told her. He was not going to break that promise.
"Squad 34!" A soldier called from atop a tower, "The vanguard needs reinforcements!"
Eren's heart raced. "Right." He turned to the other cadets in his squad. Armin, Thomas, Mina, Nac, Millius. They were all going to have to rely on each other to survive this battle. These next few hours were not going to be pleasant, Eren knew, but at the same time, he felt so alive. The training, the boiling hate for the titans, they were all finally going to be put to use. Actual, real, unsimulated use.
"Give them hell!" Eren called. He charged forward and engaged his 3DM gear, launching the hooks forward and propelling himself through the air. He was glad to take point and lead his squad, racing across building tops and soaring through the air like he was flying.
As they neared the front of the battlefield however, Eren could see Titans everywhere. He expected maybe one or two to get past the vanguard, but there were far more than that.
"So many titans!" Mina exclaimed.
"The vanguard has been overrun?" Thomas asked in disbelief.
Nac's voice added, "But those guys always talk so tough!"
From the start, Eren's didn't think this was going to be easy. He had seen the destruction that the titans were capable of. In Shiganshina, years ago, there was far too much carnage for him to ever forget. But there were just so many more. Eren wondered exactly what the situation was like.
Movement. On the side of a building, a titan grabbing the wall with its hands and the roof with its feet. It loaded its limbs, and prepared for a jump.
"Abnormal!" Eren screamed, allowing his training to take effect. He cancelled out his forward thrust with a pull of two triggers and shifted directions. The abnormal crashed into the side of a bell tower. Eren and the rest of 34th landed on a building about fifty feet away. Eren himself was hanging onto the edge of the roof with one hand. They turned around, prepared to engage the jumping titan.
It peered out from behind the bell tower, and in its mouth...
A blonde figure with short hair and thick sideburns... Eren's mind went blank. No, he thought. It can't be...
Thomas was too far away for his teammates to hear, but his lips were so easily read that he might as well have been two feet away. "Help... Me..." He said.
The titan looked at them, as if to mock them, and swallowed Thomas whole. And then, it dropped off the tower and... Walked away. As if the situation bored him.
Eren's mind flooded with rage. How dare that fucking titan turn its back to him after just murdering Thomas. Protocol be damned, Eren wasn't going to let this piece of shit get away.
"You bastard!" Eren screamed, launching his cables towards the Titan. He became faintly aware of the rest of his squad calling him back and then following him, but he didn't care. Pure hate replaced rational thought, as he ducked under bridges and over trees, flinging himself as fast as he could towards the gargantuan monster that he was determined to slaughter.
"How dare you kill my friend!?" Eren screamed. "I'm not going to let you get away!"
Eren noticed the movement below him a quarter second too late. Another abnormal jumped up, and Eren felt a searing pain in his left leg.
"Eren!" Muffled voices shouted out, overlapping each other. Behind him, he heard bgan to hear the crashes of metal and flesh impacting bricks. A voice that sounded like Millius began screaming.
"Please! Don't kill me, please! No, sto-" the voice was cut off.
My squad... Eren realized, They're killing my squad...
Eren opened his eyes. A large, bearded titan was lumbering towards an immobilized Armin. The titan picked up the blonde boy genius and opened its mouth.
No, Eren thought, I'm not going to lose you too, Armin... Not after my mother...
Eren's eyes shot open and he remembered, My mother. How they killed her, how he vowed that the titans were going to pay for what they've done, it all came flooding back to him as if a damn had burst.
Armin... The titan dropped Armin into its maw. I am not going to let you die.
Eren used his arms to prop himself up, and pulled the trigger on his gear. The expenditure of gas catapulted him forward, directly into the titan's still-open mouth. He grabbed Armin's flailing hand with not a second to spare. He used his arm and remaining leg to keep the titan's arms open and grimaced at Armin, determined.
Adrenaline fueling his strength, Eren threw Armin out of the titan's gullet and onto the roof of a nearby building. He could feel his strength beginning to fail as the titan started to slowly shut its mouth.
"I refuse to die this way. You hear me?" He snarled at the titan. He turned to Armin, delirious from the shock of losing a limb and the subsequent epinephrine rush.
"Hey, Armin..." He began, stretching his last limb towards his best friend, "You told me about the world outside. So... I'm going to get there one day... If it's the last thing I do..."
Armin's eyes widened and he scrambled for the edge of the roof, stretching his hand out to grab onto Eren. "Eren," he screamed, "Grab my hand!"
Eren felt his strength finally give. His limbs went limp, and the titan snapped its jaws shut. Annie, he thought, as the he slid down the titan's throat towards its stomach to join its past victims, I'm sorry.
Eren was never far away from Annie's mind. Amidst her slashing and hacking away at the Titans, she hoped that he was okay.
He's okay, she thought to herself. He has to be. He promised.
"Two more titans up ahead!" Reiner yelled, "Twelve meter and eight meters high. Annie, take the eight-meter one. Bertholdt and I will take the twelve-meter one."
Annie nodded and shot a hook to her right, towards the lumbering giant. She rocketer towards it, and as it stretched its hand out, shifted direction with a left thrust and wrapped around it instead. Annie used her inertia to swing around and gained a clear view of the titan's nape. She reeled in her right hook and launched the left forward. Speeding towards the target, she drew her blade back, and swung it out in a deadly arc. The blade sheared through the flesh as if it were a red-hot knife through butter. The titan went limp and dropped. Annie turned around to rejoin her squad.
"There," Reiner said, "On that rooftop."
As Annie scanned the buildings for the rooftop Reiner was talking about, she noticed several squads of soldiers-Garrison and Trainees alike, probably- standing by, as if waiting for something.
That must be it. Annie thought to herself. She swung from the buildings and drew closer to the group of survivors. Is Eren here? Is he okay?
As she landed, followed by the rest of her squad, she looked around. Eren was nowhere in to be seen. Annie was beginning to get nervous. He'll be here, she reassured herself, he'll pull through, just like he always does.
The sound of a cable reeling in and feel hitting the roof shingles broke her trance. She turned. Was it Eren?
No. It was squad 29, or what was left of them at least. Ymir, Christa, Connie... What was Armin doing with them? Wasn't he in Eren's squad? Annie looked away. She thought for a moment that she saw a glazed, dead, horrified look in Armin's eyes. She didn't want to confirm it.
The hours slipped away, falling through time and dissipating into nothingness. Clouds accumulated and threatened rain. The group of survivors were mostly seated now, crying, or with their heads buried in their hands, or staring wide-eyed, or all three. They had all seen unspeakable things, Annie knew. The situation was horrifyingly grim. The odds of their continued survival were diminishing.
"Jean!" Connie exclaimed, breaking the silence, "What are we going to do?"
Annie listened. Jean replied, rather defeated, with "What is there to do? They finally issued the order to retreat, and we were all out of gas." That was good, wasn't it? When everybody retreated into Wall Rose, the coast was clear to use Reiner's titan to break through the inner gate.
"We're all going to die because of those cowards..." Jean mumbled.
"The supply team..." Connie surmised, "Where the hell are they?"
"They barricaded themselves inside HQ. I can understand being afraid of the titans, but they abandoned their duty to keep us supplied. HQ is crawling with titans now, so we can't get in."
"We have to try!" Connie screamed. "We have to kill the titans around HQ and make it inside. We can't waste any more gas trying to run, because if we run out we're completely fucked!"
Annie saw Jean look up, surprised. She was surprised himself. Connie normally was a little empty-headed, but he pulled himself together to realize how dire their situation was. "Good to see you using your brain for once, Connie." Jean said. "But it's no use. There aren't enough of us left. Furthermore, the supply room is probably full of three- to four-meter titans. I doubt we can do much in there."
Connie sighed. "We're going to die..."
Jean ran his hand through his hair. "What a shitty life this was. If I had known, I would have told her..."
"Come on, let's give it a shot!" Sasha tried to encourage the survivors, "If we maintain formation and stick to our training, I know we can make it happen. I'll take point."
Her attempt was met with silence. Nobody was foolish enough to think they stood a chance.
"Armin, let's..." Sasha's voice trailed.
Annie turned to Reiner. "What's our next move?" She asked.
"Sit tight for now," Reiner replied, "If we do this, we do it together."
"It's hopeless..." Marco said off to their right, "We can't beat them. We're all going to die... I've been prepared to accept that, but... My death is going to be completely meaningless, isn't it?"
Annie felt something like guilt in her gut. Marco, kind, loyal, proud Marco, talking like this? It wasn't right.
"Mikasa, weren't you with the elites in the rear guard?"
Annie had been so absorbed by the current happenings she didn't even notice Mikasa running up to her. "Annie!" Mikasa's voice as laden with panic. "I know how bad things are. It's selfish of me to think of personal things right now, but have you seen Eren's squad?"
Normally, Annie would have told Mikasa to shove it, but in this, at least, they shared some common ground. If there was anything they could both agree on, Eren's safety was important. Her expression softened, slightly. "I haven't seen his squad." She replied. "He might have made it over the wall, though, so I'm not sure."
Reiner piped up. "Oh, Armin's over there if you want to ask him."
Mikasa half-ran, half-walked to where Armin was sitting with his head hung low. "Armin," she said, "you aren't hurt are you?"
Armin shook his head ever so slightly. Mikasa seemed to ease up a little bit. "Where's Eren?"
Annie could see, even from here, as tears dropped onto the roofing Armin's head was over.
"Armin, where's Eren?" Mikasa repeated, panic in her voice growing.
Armin looked up with the most pained expression Annie had seen on a human being. It was like a shore of grief was being pummeled by a cacophony of waves of terror. Tears streamed silently down Armin's face. Annie could feel the unspeakable emotions radiating off of him, and could feel her heart tearing in two, one half forcing its way to her throat and the other sinking into her stomach. Please... No... Annie thought desperately.
"They..." Armin finally found his voice, and was struggling to not choke over the words. "The cadets of the 34th trainee squad... Thomas Wagner... Nac Tias... Millius Zeramuski... Mina Carolina... Eren Yeager... Fought bravely and valiantly, and gave their lives on the field of battle."
Annie was in such shock she couldn't even cry from the crushing grief. All she could do was feel. Ice spread throughout her chest and her gaping eyes stared, horrified, without taking in a single thing it was seeing. No... Not Eren... Please, not Eren... He promised he'd come back to me.
"Please, no..." Sasha whispered.
"The entire squad was killed?" Somebody else asked.
"We'll go the same way if we try to fight." A glum voice replied.
Annie noticed all of this, but couldn't quite process it. I never even got to say "I love you too"...
"Armin," Mikasa urged, the icy calm in her voice bringing Annie back down to earth, "Now isn't the time to be emotional. Now stand up."
Mikasa turned around to address the group. "Marco, if we neutralize the titans surrounding Headquarters, we can make our way inside and resupply. Correct?"
"Y... Yeah..." Marco said uneasily, "But we can't kill them all, even with you on point."
"I can do it." Mikasa turned around, cutting into the air with her words. "I'm strong. Stronger than you, than all of you! I have the power to kill every titan that stands in my path... Even if I have to do it alone... You're weak. You're unskilled. You're cowards. I'm disappointed. Is this what you all trained for? ...How pathetic... Fine. Just sit back and watch."
A chorus of voices sounded off. "Mikasa, you're crazy!" "There are too many!" "You can't beat them!" "You're going to fight them by yourself?"
Mikasa heeded none of this. Annie could see the icy fire in Mikasa's eyes, staring all of them down. "If I lose, I die. But if I win, I live. And you can't win if you don't fight."
With that, Mikasa was off, jumping off the building and flinging herself forward.
Eren... Annie pleaded, please come back... What do I do?
"Hey!" Jean shouted. "We weren't taught to let our comrades fight alone! If you have any guts at all, then you'll follow me." With that, Jean too leaped away to face the titans, following Mikasa.
Eren wouldn't want me to give up. Annie thought. He'd want me to fight.
"Wouldn't want that, now, would we?" Reiner said, prepping for takeoff. Annie followed suit, feet heavy. She allowed her grief to turn to determination. She wasn't going to insult Eren's memory by giving in.