author's note: Eren has the power of precognition and Mikasa can summon a suit of armor... of sorts.
Eren was getting tired of waiting for something to happen. He shifted around on the soft, plush seats that came with first-class. The leather was more comfortable than anything he had sat on before. It practically conformed to the contours of his ass. He didn't know how that would work for Levi, who sat across from him. With the stick and whatnot. The train guh-shunked its way slowly across the country, and Eren watched the same old slideshow of the Alaskan terrain roll by: pine trees, rocks, more pine trees, the bear at the fork turn… He was expecting that eagle to show up soon, too. Eren sighed again. People always wanted a chance to redo things, a chance to start over. Had they any idea just how boring that could get?
Levi was sitting with one arm draped over the vampire coffin red of the booth seat. They'd boarded the train at 10:45 a.m. and from that time, Levi had drained three cups of coffee before brunch. The navy blue of his one-piece suit shifted like it had something to hide. It did. The licensed M9 Beretta's hidey-hole, tucked in the suit lining and once perfectly concealed, had been ruined by Levi's incessant fidgeting.
"My team checked the entire train. Twice. Gunther even checked the fucking roof. Don't ask me how he managed that. Where's your man?" Levi spoke from the side of his mouth as though the world had suddenly turned noir, jazz music drifting in.
"I told you. He has a thin beard, glasses, six-foot-something…" Eren said patiently.
"No, no, didn't even make it past the first one. No one has facial hair on this train, unless you count that one lady up front. Sheesh," Levi said.
He leaned in closer. Eren could smell the product in his hair. The chandelier above gave Levi's eyes the refractive glow of a predator animal. To Eren, it was the shrewd, curdled look of a rich boy whose dad owns the hotel pool that you just decided to skinny-dip in.
"Is your brain busted again?" Levi asked. "What's your mom's name?"
"Carla Yeager, and no. I think we just have to wait. That's how my visions usually pan out," Eren said.
Levi leaned back, crossing one leg over the other. Their waitress arrived, smiling prettily.
"What would you like, sir?" she asked Levi.
"Fresh-water salmon, no salad, more tea, and…" Levi considered the possibility of a soggy fish, "extra ice. I want it frozen."
The waitress turned to Eren, notebook primed.
"And you, young master?" she said.
Levi scowled. Eren's lips twitched slightly at the title.
"Do you have a cheeseburger?" Eren asked.
The waitress scurried off, knowing that the amount of product in Levi's hair equals big bucks.
Levi was really scowling now. "That's it. Disowned. I unadopt you. I'm calling my intern right now to send me the paperwork," he said.
"I wanted a cheeseburger." Eren ripped open a packet of sugar and began spreading it all over the polished table like premium grade cocaine. "You should tip her."
"I don't tip."
"If I were a millionaire, I'd tip all the time."
"I'm sure you would, cancer boy. Try to spend my inheritance before that tumor gets you."
"I'm telling Petra you said that."
"Okay, I'm sorry. I apologize. Stop doing that to the table, you psycho."
"And that."
Eren looked at his masterpiece. A crude drawing of a bearded face with glasses looked back, made from sugar and his finger. Levi's scowl looked like a permanent and pretty serious condition now as he swiped his red checkered handkerchief across the table. The train guh-shunked again, and Eren turned his head away from the blabbering richies in first-class with them, looked out the gold accented window, and began to think.
"Where's Mikasa, anyways?" Levi said.
"In the bathroom," Eren said.
"Still? For twenty minutes? Upset stomach or something?"
"No, I think she's meditating. I tried to teach her how to, but she just ends up falling asleep."
"So, the bio-weapon's clocked out on the toilet. Great."
It was around 11:30 now. Eren's brow furrowed a bit. That eagle still hadn't shown up. Eren amused himself by sending a eight-ball pool game invite to Petra, who sat stoically in her richie-disguise (way too much jewelry) on the opposite side of the train. She declined it quickly, trying to look like a professional. The rest of Levi's squad was spread strategically throughout the train, concealing various forms of weaponry and some mixed martial arts up their coiffed sleeves. Eren himself had been offered a heavy Kevlar vest, which he had declined. What was the use of body armor when they had Mikasa? But they wouldn't need Mikasa, hopefully. The mission was going well– or at least, uneventful. They just needed to find that bearded man, soon. Who knew, maybe nothing would even happen, thought Eren and then was slightly miffed at himself and genuinely worried. Was his mind going, right at this moment? Was he slipping again? No, not now, while the mission was going so well, it wasn't like that time in Oakland, or Chesterfield Middle—
And the voices began to speak all at once in Eren's mind, all unique, rebellious and stifled, like an army of revolutionaries gunning for a mad king's head. Why now? Not now. Eren looked down and caught his finger playing with the ringer on his phone, flicking at it, like a gunman's terse finger on the trigger. Eren forced himself to look out the window, again seeing the green folded umbrella tipped of pines coated in fairy dustings of snow, and lo, and behold, more rocks. Still no eagle though. Please, Eren bargained with his brain, not Oakland, not that, please.
"That's it," Levi said, apparently out of patience. Though Levi's patience was about as easy to manage as a cat on a leash. "I'm having Gunther check up front again-"
The door to the rest of the train burst open. Something unexpected rolled out of it, like a big wedding cake brought out on a silver trolley. Instead of a wedding cake, it was an ice sculpture, life-sized too. Eren and Levi stared in confusion, then pseudo-comprehension, then confusion again. The richies stared too, food falling off forks halfway to ajar mouths. The hunk of ice slid down the middle of the train car, with the same stopping power of a hand grenade. Inside it was their waitress, her pretty smile still frozen on her face, like some cave-women from prehistoric times. Their food had arrived. Past the crystalline surface, she held a platter of Levi's order; fish. Extra ice. Frozen. Slow disbelief began to thaw in everyone's numb faces. It was like one of those train murder mysteries. Who dunnit? Who froze our waitress solid? Now we'll have to wait till spring to get our entrees.
"Yooooo-hoo!" A high note jangled merrily and the door burst open again, this time kicked open, and the whole train cart found themselves facing the barrel of a gun, and behind that gun, a man with a beard and glasses, standing at around six-foot-something. Other than that, Eren wouldn't have been able to pick him out in a lineup, so unrecognizable he was now. A naval trench coat fell to his knees. His hair was bright mercury silver. His quaint reading glasses from Eren's vision had been replaced with welder's goggles, their lenses the glowing sinister white-blue of Old Man Winter come early. A top hat completed the look. And his gun… it was not like Levi's M9, nor like any other gun on the planet. The tip was that of a leaf-blower nozzle, frosted over, coated in slushy ice. The sides rattled and pounded like a faulty air conditioning unit, housing a glowing power core. It was, Eren surmised, a freeze-ray.
"This is a robbery!" said Zeke, the man from Eren's vision, smiling from ear to ear. And with that, the door burst open a third time, spilling out Zeke's compatriots, all dressed the same, with similar weapons.
"And I volunteer that you all remain calm and composed! Lest you end up like her." Zeke bowed his head and put his hand on the frozen waitress, spinning her capsule of ice around for all to see; a yeti coming down from the mountains to curse the poor, powerless villagers.
Gasps of horror rang out. Luckily for these poor village shmucks, they weren't completely powerless.
"Oakland all over again," Levi muttered.
Back in the booth in the corner of the train, Levi reached into his shirt pocket… and found himself going cross-eyed at another freeze-ray. The perpetrator was grinning a white-toothed grin, knowing that the amount of product in Levi's hair equals big bucks.
"I volunteer to be the loving recipient of all your possessions!" the man said as Levi began to shiver from the cold puffing breaths of the freeze-ray next to his face. Eren watched as the robbers moved swiftly through the train with cries of, "I volunteer myself to that pretty necklace!" or, "I volunteer myself to that wallet!"
Eren saw that Levi's face had begun to twist in some sort of heroic righteousness. This was a bad thing.
"Well?" said the man, waiting for the juicy goodies in Levi's lapel.
Eren kicked him under the table and Levi might have obliged. But then he saw Petra. She was in the process of having her locket 'volunteered.' Eren remembered. That same locket contained a picture of him, Mikasa, and Levi inside, a date scrawled on it: May 19th, 2010. The day that Levi had adopted them. The golden chain broke with a snap in a grubby robber's hands. Levi caught her eye. She shook her head: don't. Levi looked at the gun in his face. Looked back down at his hand in his suit jacket.
And said, "fat chance."
Levi fired, right through his navy suit. He hit his mark. Ice hit the wall. Eren hit the deck. A dead guy hit the deck next to him. Pandemonium broke out. From the under table, Eren watched Levi make like a speeding bullet, vaulting the booth, putting those mixed martial arts to good use. Eren pulled out his phone, opened up messages, tapped on Mikasa's name and texted: uh, help?
"Ho-ho! Look lively, Volunteers!" Zeke cried as he fired ice bolt after ice bolt at Levi's afterimages. As he was vaulting over a couple's table, the beam grazed Levi's shoes. Levi fired back, twice, only hitting the spread wing of the trench coat, as Zeke leaped, rolled back on his feet and danced on his toes.
"Come here, rat!"
He's fast, Eren thought and began to army crawl. The ice sculpture of the waitress slid past him, like a rolling barrel on a ship. The screaming had started. Levi burst out from behind a table, like a mouse from a mouse hole. A volunteer, a tall lady, aimed. Levi went low. The shot missed and ice bloomed on the chandelier, causing it to rock precariously. The woman didn't have time to reload. The sound that a broken arm makes was made. The woman folded from Levi's elbow-lock. Meanwhile, Petra was wrestling a freeze-ray from a burly gloved hand. Zeke was running now, hip-firing. "Tally-ho!" The windows splintered as more shots went wide and Levi fired again. Another dead guy.
Too close, Eren thought grimly. Too close to tell the outcome.
And Eren raised himself off the ground, becoming substantial, becoming a factor, becoming a change in the variables, a weighted set of dice in a gambler's pocket. The ringleader of the circus was standing on top of a table, with one boot in some ice-cream and the other in a plate of spaghetti, laughing and squeezing the trigger of his mechanized human-popsicle maker. His goggles spewed blue light as he went mad with this stupendously fun game of Pop-the-Levi. Eren lunged for him.
Levi's eyes went wide as he faltered. "Oi, brat, get down!" Just as a cannon blast of blue ripped the M9 from his hands.
It nailed itself to the wall of the train, spreading icy limbs.
Zeke bellowed, "Got you!" And then looked down curiously. Eren held his hairy wrist in his hands. Zeke began to smile, and then the smile died on his lips. Eren pulled, not physically, but with his mind. He felt his brain give a tremendous surge, whirlpooling around dizzily in his skull, sucking, pulling everything, everything in, with all the gravity of a black-hole. Zeke's grip slackened, his bearded face turning a nauseating gray color. Eren focused, found what he needed, and ripped it out. Zeke swayed. Then, his face cleared and contorted into mild, child-like annoyance, and, like he was swatting a bug, tore his wrist free of Eren's power, and pointed the freeze-ray at his head.
"Eren!" Levi barked from the other side of the train. He lunged desperately. A volunteer intercepted him with a slide tackle.
"I love frozen yogurt," Zeke said and Eren bemoaned the fact that those were the last words he was ever going to hear.
He squeezed his eyes shut…
Suddenly, there was a great wall of sound around him, the low hum of a jet engine, a flying stealth bomber, vibrating metal, nuclear pounding, pounding, pounding on the casings. Iron footfalls rang out and he opened his eyes. A suit of armor stood in front of him. Its head scraped the ceiling of the train at nine-foot-two. The suit of armor had grown from its own evolutionary track to get to this point of utter superiority, a path separate from those antiques sitting at the round table in Camelot. It had the shoulder plates of a seashell knight riding in from the crashing shore; knee caps of pronged stars; whirring tectonic plates of metal seething stoically and quietly with dignity. The feet were pointed vipers. A red cape unfurled from the neck like a billowing magic carpet. The helmet was two huge lips of steel over a band of darkness. And, surrounding the helmet, crowned the halo of an angel. This was all of wonder and all of imagination. This was the Juggerknight.
It creaked and groaned as it inclined its shelled head to Eren. Two parenthetical wings crossed on the chest piece. The Wings of Freedom.
"Eren, please stay behind me," Mikasa said, her voice a tumultuous echo from the helmet. Eren just nodded and glued his ass to the ground.
"Hee-hoo! You have your very own guardian angel, boy! Isn't that neat!" Zeke said. He scratched the side of his head with the barrel of his freeze-ray, yelped because it was cold, and took aim. The remaining of the volunteers followed his lead.
"Levi and Miss Petra, take cover as well." Mikasa spared a glance backwards. "Watch over Eren. Then, remembering she was supposed to be a hero: "A-and everything else on the train."
"All you," Levi muttered, taking Petra and slinking back from enemy lines to friendly territory. The richies all bustled, terrified rabbits, next to Eren. He wrinkled his nose a bit.
"Big thing. Big… thing. Think." Zeke's eyes widened beneath his polar lens. "Crab! You're a crab, aren't you?"
"Hm." Mikasa appraised Zeke with the impartial gaze of a tracking missile firing system. She readied her stance and the Juggerknight sank into a graceful pose of all sharp angles, from the elbows, to the ankles, to the neck. Her gauntleted forearm rose. Spinning wheels of light burst around them, like a jester with hula-hoops around their arms. Mikasa's weapon of choice. Eren knew that they burned hotter than whatever people were made out of. Mikasa said: "I don't really like the cold."
And the Juggerknight dropped to one knee, swung its heavy arm, and hurtled its discuses. Zeke dodged. The other volunteers didn't. Decapitation was inevitable. But the discus bounced, rebounded, hit the wall of the train, trails of yellow marked its path, it was everywhere, and suddenly it was back in Mikasa's toothed glove.
"You missed," Zeke said, waggling his gun. The other volunteer's guns split, slid off two separate halves. Power-slag leaked blue on the floor. Zeke looked around. "Well, you missed mine, anyways." And then he was firing wicked thunderbolts of ice and sorcery, aiming for impromptu hostages, Eren and the rest of them, and Mikasa was bounding forward with wings on her feet. The train shook with impact. The Juggerknight was swallowed in its cape. Frostbite grew black on its arms, shoulders, legs… joints! Zeke was locking up joints!
"Mikasa! Don't get tripped up!" Levi said it for him.
Mikasa gasped as she and her bulk staggered and the train mimicked her movements. It was that old game Eren played as a child on a rickety log: Rock-The-Boat. The train tilted sickeningly on its axis. Left, right, left, the Juggerknight counterbalanced and overbalanced, and people were stumbling too, falling against the wall of the train. Eren got a close-up view of the cliff side out the window. The decisive blow: Zeke squeezed the trigger once more and added to the mass of glaciers sprouting on Mikasa's chest piece. She was falling now too, her arms pinwheeling.
Unlike the richies and Eren, the Juggerknight was not under 900 pounds. The wall stood no chance. The loudest of booms. It crumpled, Mikasa falling with it, off the scenic side of the mountain, into a blindness of snow. Everyone else was slipping too. The train was nearing a vertical plane, wheels grinding on the slope. Eren felt his leg go over the would-be-wall-but-was-now-in-fact-the-floor, and then his torso. Open air met his extremities. He could see the drop, the green heads of pines, the little sailboats huddled in the Alaskan harbor. He scrabbled for a grip, found it in Levi's small hand.
"Hang on, Eren," Levi said, pulling, face bloodless with effort. Gravity pulled harder.
"Trying," Eren forced out. Levi's grip faltered.
Zeke was hanging sideways from a table leg, grinning, one hand on his top hat. "Good-bye, crab!"
Levi wingtip shoes brushed Eren's head. His bottom teeth ground. The snowy wind pistol whipped Levi's stark black hair around. Eren knew that they would both go over. Levi wouldn't let go. He would rather them both go over than let go. Eren did it for him. He opened his palm. His stomach dropped.
"Eren!" Levi screamed for the second time that day and Eren was falling…
And then he was falling backwards. A jolt, a clang, and Eren was caught in not-so-soft fingers. Snow flurried around a winter knight's mask. Rising, Eren was cradled against the Juggerknight's chest. He was shivering violently. Giant wings, the same as the ones embellished on Mikasa's chest, beat the air, beat the cold away. She had traded her cape for the ability of flight. The train was back in sight through the blizzard as they flew. Mikasa looked down at him and Eren could see her gray eyes in the slits of her helmet, caffeinated with concern.
"That's the second time you saved me," Eren said. "Thanks." And the eyes softened.
"Hold on," Mikasa said and, tucking Eren to her chest like some great bird of prey, sped up the mountainside to catch up with the train. The cart with Zeke in it wasn't hard to find. It was the only one conspicuously missing a wall and tipped on its side, sending sparks flying on the rails. Gun-shunking along injuredly, puttering and panting, as the rest of the train dragged its carcass behind it. Mikasa coasted above it, flying low enough for Eren to touch the pine tree tips and silently enough as to not disturb the snow on them.
She veered left, now traveling stealthily alongside the length of the cart. Inside it, Zeke was attempting to get the robbery back on track from his position: still hanging sideways from that table leg like a kid on a playground. "—single file line, everyone! Over here! Where your volunteered goodies will be safe with me!" The rest of the passengers were gripping the wall, (which was now the floor) trying not to get shoved out over the cliff at every bump of the train. Levi and Petra saw Mikasa and Eren. Their faces sagged in relief; Eren thought he could see some white hairs sprouting in Levi's cut. Zeke saw Mikasa.
"Flying crab!" he had time to say, before Mikasa's discus split his freeze-ray in two.
The richies gave a big cheer. Eren found it as annoying as clapping when the plane landed.
The Juggerknight landed with a steel clunk, its wings folded, and Mikasa said: "Surrender," which would have been menacing except that she was still carrying Eren in the crook of her elbow, a position less embarrassing than a fire-man hold, but more embarrassing than bridal-style. Both of those, Eren had experienced before. He didn't have time to be embarrassed about it now because in an instant Petra and Levi were on him. "—damn stupid brat, wearing that bullet proof vest next time—" ("that wouldn't have helped," Eren said) and, "—oh, you're shivering honey, Levi! Give him your jacket!" ("what? I'm not giving him my jacket," Levi said, "here, help me breath on my gun, will you? It's still frozen").
"Absolutely! I was just thinking the same thing!" Zeke said, smiling nervously, hiding behind the frozen waitress. He made a big deal of setting the two broken parts of the freeze-ray down. Mikasa watched him warily. He kicked them across the floor and then— "Oops!" Zeke planted a boot on the surface of the ice sculpture, and sent it barreling down the aisle, like a skidding hockey puck. The Juggerknight was the bulky goalkeeper. Unfortunately, Mikasa didn't know what sport she was playing. She stared at it in confusion, then pseudo-comprehension, then confusion.
She side-stepped easily. It slicked down the train, heading for the open air, right off the cliff.
"Hey, wait, wait—" Levi was lunging, almost there, it was teetering on the edge, he had his finger on it- and the train guh-shunked and it was off! Falling! "Shit."
"Mikasa, that has our waitress in there," Eren said breathlessly. Mikasa's wings spread, knocking down a couple of richies, and she dived. Eren scrambled to the ledge while Levi performed a not-so-legal citizen's arrest on Zeke.
"An accident Mr. Blue, I swear— not so rough!"
Eren was just in time to see the hunk of ice burst open on a cliff-side rock into a million pieces, falling to earth. Mikasa barely avoided it. Eren closed his eyes. Retrieval was unnecessary; they had been taught physics in school.
"Eren," Levi said. He muscled a knee into the small of Zeke's back. "How many casualties did we have in your vision?"
Eren's mouth barely moved. "One."
"Who?"
"Him." Eren nodded at Zeke.
"No one else?"
"No."
Later, when the police came, Eren saw an eagle alight its regal body down on the slim branch of a pine tree.