"This isn't right." Connie said for the hundredth time, pacing back and forth in the same spot he had been for the last half hour.
The six of them were waiting anxiously in their sparsely furnished quarters on the east side of the complex. Half a dozen beds were pushed against the far wall under a minuscule window, and a table with 3 chairs were thrown in near the door as if in afterthought. Pieck was sitting on the closest bed to the window while the rest of them stood in a tight circle in the center of the room.
Sweat was building up along Jean's hairline. "It doesn't make any sense." He said, looking around restlessly. "If they weren't ready to make any decisions, why keep us here? This was supposed to be and introductory meeting to discuss the IDEA of an alliance, not a full-blown trial for one."
Armin was staring blankly at the floor, mind swirling. "As desperately as I wanted our first contact to go well, this was much too easy. They were too agreeable. And why stretch out our stay here? There's no way any of them would want to keep us in their city for longer than absolutely necessary. Something is going on here, and I don't think it's a good something."
Reiner was listening intently through the door leading back out into the hall. "The door is locked, but there are only two guards outside. Those are pretty good odds versus the six of us."
"Escaping this hell hole is only going to work if Historia's informants have moved our cart to the lower west end of the building. That's the easiest spot to get outside, and furthest from patrols." Annie reminded him while she flicked the small blade in and out of the ring on her left index finger.
"The cart is still there and our gear is gone." Pieck said flatly.
All eyes darted to her. She was standing on one of the beds and peering out the small window that must have overlooked the courtyard.
"What?" Reiner hissed. He ran from the door over to the window and pulled himself up to look.
"Shit. Our cart is pushed up against the edge of the inner wall in the complete opposite direction! What that fuck are they doing?!" Dropping back down onto the floor, he growled angrily. "They should have moved it hours ago."
The room was deadly quiet as they all came to the same horrific conclusion.
"We've been compromised, haven't we?" Whispered Connie, his face damp with sweat. They turned to their Commander, hoping he would disagree.
"It seems as though we have." Armin said softly. He squeezed his eyes shut as the reality sank in.
This is how far the Jaegerist will go to continue fueling the fire. He thought dismally. I knew the chances of this happening, and I still lead my entire team into a deathtrap. Even knowing their mission had been a just one, the sharp claws of guilt racked at his heart. They had to try, and now that they've failed, trying seemed even more important.
"We knew the odds." He said, meeting all the eyes in turn. "We knew the dangers we might face here. Well, now that danger is here. We can either sit in this room waiting to die or go out fighting the good fight. If I know every one of you as well as I think I do, I know which option you would all prefer."
Armin's eyes glowed in the dim light of the room. Jean straightened his back, and Reiner nodded.
"Fighting the good fight, huh." Connie's face had broken out into an enormous grin. Fear still coated his skin with moisture and his hands still shook, but he knew his resolve was sound. His thoughts were filled with his mother's face. He would fight this until the end for her, and for everyone else in this god-forsaken world.
The company stood tall, alight with understanding. If this was the end, then they would go down together.
"Wait, listen." Annie whispered suddenly, head turning towards the door in alarm. Outside their room that was their gallows, they could hear a rattling sound coming towards them from somewhere to their right. A voice called out: someone was speaking to the guards stationed in the hallway. The voice was honey-smooth and melodic, low and sweet. The guards seemed to answer the person who owned it, but whatever they said didn't seem to agree with them.
A muffled crash from the hall made them all jump, immediately setting them into a loose attack stance. There were more sounds of a struggle going on outside, but then they abruptly stopped as fast as they had started. The jingle of keys replaced them as the lock began to turn.
Just as the door swung open, Annie charged at the figure that had stepped into the room. Grabbing them, she shoved her forearm into their neck and slammed them back into the wall. She flipped out the blade in her ring and pressed it into the soft spot underneath their chin.
"You knocked on the wrong door, Jaegerist." She growled menacingly.
"Wait!" Armin cried. Recognition flitted across his face as he saw who it was.
The slender woman Annie had flattened up against the wall couldn't have been much taller than five feet. Dark brown hair flowed in rivers around her, framing her small and angular face. Yet it was none of these features that had made Armin call out: it was her eyes. Large ochre brown eyes stared back at him, the kind of eyes that could hold the world. More incredibly so, they seemed to contain only a trace of fear despite her compromising position. She was wary and nervous, but the only emotion that seemed to radiate out from her was a sense of urgency.
"I know you." Armin said slowly, walking up to stand next to the two women. "You were at the conference, one of General Loren's elites." More than that he remembered the feeling that had passed through him when he caught her gaze outside the courtroom doors. It had felt like she had been searching for something in his face, asking some sort of unanswerable question. There was something familiar about that look, like a memory that remained just out of reach. The group was regarding this interaction with bewilderment.
"Who cares if she was there?! We need to move while we have the chance!" Jean snapped. He stalked towards the now open door and looked cautiously out into the hallway. "Guaranteed someone heard all that noise." He turned to back to their captive with a look of confusion after inspecting the prone guards. "They're knocked out cold."
"With all due respect, we really don't have time for this." The woman's voice was calm and only slightly shaky; her gaze never straying far from Annie's hostile face as the words came tumbling out of her mouth. "If you want to kill me then that's your choice, but your friend is right, someone probably heard me. The Council is coming to arrest you all for treason, and your associates meant to help you escape if things got hairy have all been compromised." A pained look crossed her soft features as she said this. "You're the only ones left."
"Yeah? And how would you know that?" Reiner said threateningly.
"Because I caught my boss beating the snot out of one of them, that's how." She snapped. Reiner's look of intimidation quickly changed to a startled one. This woman may have been small in stature, surrounded by her enemies, but she certainly wasn't a coward.
"Now, I may be able get you all out of here alive, but first you're going to have to do two rather difficult tasks. One: pull that knife out of my neck, and two: trust me."
Annie scoffed. "Oh yeah? Well in case you hadn't noticed, we aren't exactly in a trusting mood." She hadn't moved a single inch. The woman didn't seem very surprised at that fact.
She gave a high, frightful laugh and returned Annie's cold look with an exasperated one. "You know what, scratch that. You don't have to trust me for a single second, but you're going to have to follow my lead if you want to leave this place mostly unscathed."
"Why would a high-ranking elite soldier want save a bunch of traitors, anyhow?" Pieck asked nonchalantly, walking up to study the Jaegerist's face. "Plan to keep the bounty all to yourself?"
No. Armin thought. That's not it.
"That's enough." They all turned to him, confused. His eyes didn't break from the woman's face as he put a firm hand on Annie's arm. "Let her go." Annie shot him an incredulous look. "That's an order." His voice was absolute.
10 seconds passed before Annie jerked her arm off the woman's windpipe and backed up. She stalked a few feet away, still maintaining her aggressive stance. Armin Arlert towered over the soldier who looked up at him nervously.
"Tell me, why do you want to help us? The odds are slim as it is, and you would be damning yourself to more than just death if you do this. You will be hunted for the rest of your life. So why?" His words were not accusatory, only curious.
The woman held his gaze intently, though she seemed slightly puzzled as she spoke. "I'm still trying to figure that out myself. My best guess is because today was the day I finally decided to listen to the voice that has been screaming inside my head for the past three years. Look, I don't know if the things you said are really the truth or just some lie you made up to lower our guard for whatever reason. What I do know is that the Eldian High Council isn't going to give you a chance to prove it."
Armin's team regarded her uneasily, though what she said only confirmed what they had already assumed.
"I'm doing this," she continued, "because there's no way I'm going to let you die until I can see that truth for myself, and… and I guess because it's the right thing to do. Probably not for me or for Eldia, and certainly not for us Jaegerists, but for someone. It's likely that we're going to get ourselves killed if we try this, but let's face it: we're dead either way. I have to at least try, right?"
Armin's eyes were unfathomable as he took this in, thinking of every time he had said those exact words as a distant memory tugged at the back of his mind again. He didn't know if this woman's change of heart was honest or merely self-serving, but other than the fact that they had no other legitimate options to consider, the way she spoke rang with earnest and they were running out of time.
"What's your name?" He said softly.
"Arya Halbrand, sir."
Breaking away from their prolonged stare, he looked at his companions.
"Everyone, fall in. This might not be our original plan but it's the best chance we've got. Arya knows more about this place than we ever could, so follow her lead." Everyone looked at him, dumbfounded. "I don't care if you trust her or not. If there is even the slightest chance that what we said today got through to just one person, I'll take it." Doubt clouded their expressions as they looked between Armin and Arya. What he said was correct, of course. Despite their obvious objections, the truth of the matter was mutually agreed upon: they needed her. Sighing deeply, Jean held out his arm begrudgingly in an accepting gesture. "Lead the way, I guess, but we need to locate our gear before we can even think about leaving."
"Um… yeah, about that…"
Sitting on the wheeled cart just outside the door were the 6 long boxes containing their ODM gear. Connie's mouth fell open as he lifted the lids to see them just as he had packed them. Once again, they found themselves staring incredulously at the tiny woman named Arya.
She shrugged. "Suit up, I guess?"
Chuckling slightly, Armin bent down to examine an open container on a bottom shelf of the cart. Reaching his hand inside he gave Arya a puzzled look as he pulled out a few dark-colored mesh hoods.
"I had an idea that might help me not to get killed tonight. Something that might prove useful someday." She mumbled, looking apologetic over at Annie, whose face was still hard and incredibly wary. "But you are really not going to like it."
The early spring night was unseasonably cold as they crept their way out of a window halfway down an adjacent hallway to theirs and along a deeply shadowed portion of the castle's eaves. The moon was absent, which was a stroke of luck. Below them on the ground soldiers marched in every direction, preparing for an arrest that (if their luck held) wouldn't happen. Around the western edge the eaves gave way to a low roof that acted as the military's stables.
"If we can get across this roof and onto the outer wall within exactly two minutes, we can sneak between the guard's rotation." Arya looked back over her shoulder at them, speaking quietly. "Most of the ancillary sentries are busy inside preparing for your capture." She grinned.
"You have an interesting sense of humor, kid." Reiner muttered. He was watching over her shoulder for the supposed gap in the patrol. There it was, and as Arya had said, they had a very small window to work with.
"We are going to have to go up and over the wall and run on foot until we can get out of ear shot. If we use our gear too early, they will hear us. Once we get to the edge of the city there is a small stable; there should be enough horses for all of you." She turned her attention back to the wall. "Then you can skirt around south passed the major cities until you're back on your ship."
"We aren't going south."
Arya frowned. Unless they were planning on swimming back to Marly, south was the only option they had. "Well, either way our first goal is that stable. We go after that second sentry passes around the corner."
She looked back to confirm with Armin, and he nodded. "Is everyone clear on the fallback plan if we are spotted before we are over the walls?" They all bent their heads in acknowledgment and pulled out the dark masks Arya had provided them. Annie scoffed. "This is beyond stupid."
Armin didn't respond. The second guard had just come into sight, heading for their exit point. "Okay, hoods up everyone. Not a single person can see our faces or both plans go straight out the window." Obligingly the dawned their face coverings and yanked up the hoods of their cloaks. The seconds ticked by, and the group collectively drew a breath as the second guard began to loop back around to the left.
"On my mark. One"-
But before Arya could finish her count a blasting siren rang out from all corners of the complex, deafening them. The two guards they were watching ran off in opposite directions towards their muster points.
"RUN!" Jean screamed.
Leaping from the edge of the castle and onto the lower roof they took off at a sprint. Tiles slid out from under their feet and crashed to the ground below them as they barreled for the outer-most wall. They had just reached the lip that would bring them up to their exit point when a 5 burst shot blew chunks out of the stone wall beside Annie and Pieck. Down below raised voices shouted to one another and additional shots were fired in their direction. Armin yelled back to them as he flew over the wall. "Engage you Omni Gear! Plan B, NOW!" There was no need for secrecy now; it was time to run.
With a loud whirring pop 7 sets of ODM cables burst out from the mechanisms wrapped around their waists and embedded themselves into the hard stone of a nearby building. The night air ripped at their exposed skin as they simultaneously activated their handheld triggers and flew into the sky.
Nothing had ever come close to the feeling of flying on ODM to Arya, who couldn't stop herself from grinning wildly again as the pressured canisters attached to her hips pushed air through a vent on her lower back and thrust her high into the air and over a rooftop. Shifting slightly in the harness that was wrapped tightly around her, she used her body's new position to adjust the trajectory of her cables and pulled the trigger again. She hit her mark dead on and let the momentum pull her swiftly around a church steeple. Another blast of the canisters sent her up and over small grassy area, cables retracting and leaping back out to connect with the building across the square. It a series of practiced movements Arya was up and running down the far side of its shingled roof, then she was airborne again.
"Damn, that chick can move!" Connie whooped as they vaulted and plunged through the western section of the Capitol. Before his exclamation could reach her, bullets were raining down on them from behind. Their would-be captors were hot in pursuit.
Swearing loudly, Jean quickly pulled back only one of his cables, helping him take a sharp right turn to blow their line of fire. Moving as fast as they could muster, they continued forward, dodging around the buildings instead of over them. This was efficient at blocking bullets but would slow them down considerably and the Jaegerists were closing in fast.
"Why are there only five of them?!" Reiner heard on of the soldier's yell back to another as he dodged around a tavern and through an alleyway. After a few minutes he heard them yell again. "There! To the Northwest!"
Shit, they spotted them too quickly! He pulled up sharply over a roof to get eyes on them. Down below and to his right was a single horse flying at breakneck speeds through the straightest sections of the road. Two figures could be seen on its back, one as the rider and a second tied and bound to the back of the saddle: the apparent captive clad in the easily distinguishable black and silver suit of a Jaegerist elite.
"They've got one of ours!"
Letting the soldier's shout have just enough time to register to the rest of the squadron, Reiner yanked hard on his cables and vaulted backwards over the scout. Within seconds he had his hilts loaded with long flexible steel blades which he swung with all his might at the right-most cable of the man's ODM gear. With a scream he plummeted sideways and smashed off the corner of a building, blood splattering across the wall in a thick spray. From behind him Connie came flying over top of another house. The sound of rushing air was suddenly torn as they hear Pieck give out a loud shriek.
"Pieck is falling behind!" Connie hollered up to them.
It took a great deal of strength to operate ODM gear well, and Pieck had less practice time on it than anyone else. She was still struggling to get used to the movements and exertion it too to maneuver oneself properly.
Whirling around mid-air, Arya rotated herself the way they had come. Five or six soldiers were barreling down on Pieck as she tried swing up and over a low-slung home to Arya's left.
I know them; they are in Captain Reyes squadron! She thought fearfully, hesitating to intervene. How can I distract them without giving myself away?! These are the people I once trained with; can I really just take their lives for the sake of a strangers?
A bubble of horror engulfed her as several of the soldier's fell from the sky and pounced on Pieck: there was nothing to be done.
Lifting her arms, she readjusted her grip to a secondary trigger and pulled: BANG. Several screams of agony let her know that she had hit her marks. Using one side of her gear she swung around towards Pieck and took down another 2 soldiers before getting herself moving in the right direction again.
I just killed my own comrades. What the hell am I doing?! Terror and uncertainty tore through Arya's chest and tears flew into her hairline as the wind tore them from her face, but there was no time for her to fall apart now. There was a whole army of elites on their tail, but her luckily her actions kept them off Pieck long enough for her the gain some ground.
The five of them shifted course and angled themselves in a tight defensive circle above the rider and his abductee. Even with the added weight the horse pushed on at top speed as the neared the edge of the Capitol.
"There, up ahead!" Arya screamed.
It was Reiner who spotted the stable first and made a break for the long building on the outskirts. He was on the ground and running before the others had even swung out over the last few buildings. The area around the stables was thankfully deserted at this time of night, which let him get three horses untethered by the time the rest of them touched down hard in the packed dirt. Rolling and skidding to a stop, they rushed to untie the rest and scattering the few that remained. The open plains beyond would hinder any pursuing soldiers, but it wouldn't stop them indefinitely. More gunshots rained down from above as the Jaegerist leaped up and over the last few structures on the edge of the city. Just as they did the lone rider blasted out from the closest alleyway and flew past them into the open field. Without looking back the company wheeled their horses around and took off at a gallop after them into the wilderness of Paradis.