Levi
"Yo, Levi. You grown any yet?" Gas hisses as it ejects from a canister, much like if the man was wearing ODM gear, but instead of blades, he bears twin firearms. "Woohoo!" Flying up, he aims down at Levi. "Oh? It don't look like you changed at all!"
Levi angrily draws his blades to engage the older brown-haired man with a cry. "KENNY!" Ejecting one of his blades, he throws it at Kenny, but the assassin blocks it with his firearm.
"KABOOM!" A shot is fired, ripping through Levi's cloak and the stone structure behind him. With a final glance at Nifa, Levi rushes down the roof, evading more strong blasts as he falls in the space between buildings and dashes off with his ODM gear.
By the time he got to the cart, Eren and Historia were already disposed of and any chance of rescuing them was shelved immediately by the presence of other assassins. He hooks himself to the ground to dodge their gunfire, then proceeds to fly as fast as he can from the gunmen and their powerful weapons. Shit! They predicted every last one of our movements! Seeing Kenny's shadow, he hooks to a building and adjusts course to an alleyway. Kenny... What the hell is he doing in the Military Police?! Gunfire rains down all around Levi, forcing him to use his agility to get around the alleyway and fly straight into a bar.
The other patrons are alarmed by his appearance. "It's Levi...of the Scouts!"
"W-Welcome to our establishment!" The man behind the bar nervously says.
Touching his forehead, Levi feels blood seeping out of a wound above his left eye. Shit...if this keeps up, I'll lose my team, Eren, and Historia too.
"Ain't that the damnedest thing! I smell a filthy rat coming from this bar... Come out, you little rodent..." Kenny flamboyantly enters the bar. "Found ya! The law has come to exterminate the vermin! Bang! Bang!" But by the time Kenny entered the be, Levi hid behind the counter. "The hell?! Ain't you here?!"
"Right here, Kenny. It's been a while. Never thought you'd still be alive. What happened to slaughtering the Military police? Now you're one of them?"
"Adults do plenty of things a kid like you can't understand. Oops, my bad. You're just so tiny, it's hard to believe you're older now. I been looking forward to seeing you in action. Never thought all those tricks I taught you would be helping you out like this. Didn't I ever tell you what happens to a cornered rat? No matter which way you try to run, you'll get blasted from above. Hey, Levi..." A chair smashes into the bottles on the shelf, raining glass and alcohol on Levi. "There's gotta be a reason you became a Scout, and I think I know what it is. We had no choice but to survive in that garbage dump. It took all we had each day to keep livin'. And when we found out how big the world really was, you can bet it hurt like hell. But something saved us... We'd found something we wanted to do. It's that simple. It's simple, but the truth is...the only thing that made our lives fulfilling was finding hobbies."
"Hobbies?" Levi reaches up to a bottle, turning it slightly to an unlabeled side of it to get a view of Kenny. "So is blowing the heads off my team another hobby of yours?"
"Yup. To achieve my grand goals, I'll kill as much as I have to. You're no different. You kill when it benefits you, too."
"Yeah..." Reaching for the rifle underneath the bar counter, he holds it up and fires at Kenny, hitting his adversary out of the bar. Standing up, he hands the rifle to the bartender. "Thanks, old man." Picking up a chair, he throws it out the window, using it as bait for gunfire. It works, and Levi uses the confusion to leap out the window, shooting a hook at the baited gunman's face. Taking his body along, he uses it as a shield to protect himself from the dead man's comrades as they fire on Levi. Their ammunition exhausted, Levi discarded the body and propelled himself forward, killing the two shooters in one sword swing.
Elijah
BOOM!
My head turns to that sound. What the hell was that?
"Gunshots!"
"Huh?" Connie looks around, perplexed.
"From there!" Sasha points to the southwest of Trost. "I heard a bunch of shots!"
Good, she heard them too. Sasha's sense of hearing is much sharper than any of ours, especially my own, comparatively as strong as the late Miche's sense of smell.
"You think something happened?" Jean says to me and Mikasa.
"Most likely," Mikasa says. "The Captain had this message for us... From now on, we'll be fighting humans, too, and not just Titans." As expected, the five others were shocked just as I'm sure Mikasa and I were initially hearing said message. But our enemy has always been human...just this time...we're not food.
"Huh? You mean...?"
"...Move out!" I command, leading the charge in the direction of the gunfire.
"Hey!" I turn to Jean, his confusion obvious. "You mean…'human' human?"
"...Yes, Jean. But hopefully, it doesn't have to come to that. But we're facing an enemy unprepared."
"Hey!" Connie shouts, pointing to the ground. "There goes Eren!"
"Captain!" One block to our right, the cart carrying Eren and Historia turns a corner, but both teenagers are lying down. Levi chases after the cart, but he's in turn being chased by an unknown man with a different form of ODM, its weapon of choice is a firearm.
"What the hell?!" Jean shouts.
As we follow after, we witness Levi brutally kill the man, much to our collective horror. When I say collective, I mean even Mikasa's dead eyes are shaken by the bloodshed.
He spots us afterward, pointing at the wagon in the distance. "Chase the wagon!"
Mikasa is the only one to respond as we follow Levi. "Yes, sir!"
"Listen up! They're used to fighting other people! They already got three of ours. If we're gonna get those two back, you can't hesitate! If you get the chance, you kill! Got it?!"
Mikasa is still the only one to say "Roger." If it's to save Eren, she'll do it without much further argument. I nod my head affirmatively, for the sake of Historia. Levi dives down, ejecting the man in the cart with a hook and leading another away.
"Armin, Jean! Secure the wagon! We'll cover you!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Another dead..."
"Jean!"
With some hesitation from Jean, the two of them follow Levi's orders, landing in the cart. The driver takes notice of them, but not of Mikasa kneeing her in the face. Shaking, Jean points his sword at the woman. "Don't move!" But she does anyway, knocking his sword away and turning the tables on him.
"Jean!" Swords out, I swoop down from behind the cart, Mikasa in front, to save Jean when gunfire erupts.
The woman is the victim, Armin the shooter. Gasping, I retreat back, unaware of the three gunmen that pass above until it's too late. Jean and Armin are saved by Levi, Petra, and Sasha, allowing the enemy to take control of the cart as it comes towards Trost's inner gate. Gunfire forces us to ground ourselves and deters a final attempt to save Eren and Historia. Mikasa doesn't accept that until Levi holds her back.
"Don't do it! Fall back!" She tries to fight back but eventually gives up. Once more, with the last time still fresh in our minds, Eren and Historia are taken away from us by the enemy.
"Eren!"
Some time later
"What's the matter? This grimy place kill your appetite?"
"No," Armin says darkly and detached, much as he was when he spoke to Bertholdt back on Reiner's shoulder. "Jean, there's something I don't understand..."
"What's that?"
"When I shot that gun to save you...I honestly thought I didn't make it in time. Sorry, but... Why was I the one who shot first?"
Jean looks away, replaying the horrifying moments in his head. "That's..."
"Because the other person hesitated," Levi states matter-of-factly. "It's true." In other words, if that woman hadn't, Jean would be dead. He doesn't take that well.
"Armin, I'm sorry. I should've done what I had to do."
I know what it is." Armin says in the same cold voice. "That person I killed... I bet they were a nice person. Someone that was much more human than I am. I pulled the trigger so easily... I did... I'm-"
"Armin, you've got blood on your hands now. You can't go back to who you were."
Mikasa takes offense to that. "Why would you say that?!"
"Embrace the new you. Just think, if your hands were still clean, Jean wouldn't be here right now. I'll tell you why you pulled the trigger. Because your comrade was about to die. Armin, thanks to you getting blood on your hands, nobody on our squad ended up dead. Thank you."
"Lieutenant Levi, I… I thought it was wrong to be fighting other humans and wrong for you to order us to do it. I was afraid of hurting other people. But...I'm the one who was wrong. Next time, I'll shoot."
"I never said anything about who was right or wrong. I don't even know myself. Are you really the one in the wrong?" Leaving Jean with that puzzle, Levi stands up. "Now then, it's about time we hear what he has to say." Levi walks over and joins me with the merchant president, tugging off the cloth around his mouth.
"Wait! I'm just an old man used for moving wagons around the-"
"We've met this man once before," Mikasa says, referring to the meeting she and I had with the man. "In the city, people were calling him 'Boss.'"
"Yeah, I know. Dimo Reeves, right?"
"Tsk. We were just following orders the Military Police forced on us. And failed big time. They'll plunder the Reeves Company for all that it's worth. They won't stop with me and my dumb son. They'll make sure all my employees die in so-called accidents."
"So you'll die without a fight?" The man looks up to Levi. "Trost should have collapsed by now, but it's persevered. That's because the Reeves Company brings people and work together. But if the company was gone for good, just how few would survive the winter?"
"Are you suggesting I team up with you?"
"We just need to know where Eren and Historia are. If you're supplying the Military Police, we can figure something out."
"But can you stop my city and employees from dying of starvation?"
"I can't guarantee it. However, you can trust we'll move towards that end."
Once we got Reeves to agree to work with us, I took a walk outside where Sasha stands watch. "Hey."
She smiles. "Hey."
I shut the door behind me and walk to her right side, leaning against the wall and gazing to the blue-orange sky. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm okay, all things considered. What about you?"
I drop down, hugging my knees. "Well, after writing it all down, I feel a bit better. I'm just worried about Eren and Historia. They need to be rescued...again. Not to mention we almost died again, but...at least we know they aren't dead." I'm not entirely sure of that myself but in the bigger picture, I truly believe that to be true, Sighing, I drop my head, then look to Sasha, remembering her efforts today. If it wasn't for her, we wouldn't have known about the gunfire as soon as we did and we wouldn't have gotten a chance to save Eren and Historia. I may have heard the gunshots, but Sasha's intuition is much greater than mine. I doubt Levi's death would've been a result even if we didn't make it in time, but we did our best. She also saved Mikasa from the merchant boss when he tried reaching for the gun when Mikasa's mind was elsewhere. "Hey," She turns to me, seeing my smile. "You did well today. Spotting the gun, hearing the gunshots, you did better in an hour or so teamed with me than any other cadet I was assigned with for an entire day."
Sasha beams as she moves in front of me, looking up to me with the six or seven inches I have on her. "You lead us well, Elijah."
"...I didn't do much, we still failed."
"Hey. We're alive. Sure, Eren and Historia got taken, we failed, but we still succeeded nonetheless. It went much better than if Mikasa was leading us. Or Armin, Jean, and definitely better than the 'genius.'" She turns around and leans her head back on my chest, resuming her watch but enjoying my presence. I however get a face full of red hair. "...We're going to find them, right Elijah?"
"Levi made a deal with Reeves, that fat oaf. He's going to bring the Military Police to us. Hange and Moblit will be joining us, so...it should be a good time. Can't speak to our new 'guest' though. We'll find Historia, Sasha. ...Maybe Eren, too."
She arches her head back to me with a frown. "Elijah!"
"I'm just messing with ya." I rest my chin on top of her head, looking out to the sky...thinking.
Mikasa and I stand together in silence, watching the civies pass. I notice the mother-daughter pair stay behind, the little girl waving to me and Mikasa. "Thank you, miss!"
"Thanks to you, we'll live. We are forever grateful." Mikasa gasps but says nothing as she sheathes her swords and salutes with her fist over her heart. I do the same, then we leave the pair behind.
The way that little girl smiled at us... "...Heh."
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing, Potato girl." I turn her around. Sasha snickers as I do, raising her arms around my neck.
"An odd time to be the romantic, don't ya think?" So she says as she pushes me firmly against the wall, forgetting that it was her who started this. Our faces still close, hers morphs to concern as she looks away. "Promise me...no heroics. I know I say it selfishly because I know you would do anything to protect us all, but...each time you do-"
"Okay." I raise her face up, making her see my face and my words. "I'm no hero, Sasha, but I promise I won't take any...unnecessary risks. Sound fair?"
Sasha sighs as she places her head underneath mine again, lowering her arms to my waist. "Better than nothin', I suppose." We laugh at the use of her accent before standing together in quietness underneath the merging of light and darkness, using this time to forget the troubles yet to come.
Three hours later, I arrive with Hange and Moblit at the new hideout where Levi Squad is located. Once we were set to move, Levi sent me back to Hange to recount today's events. I found her where she should be, at the Garrison HQ. Once my message was given, we waited until one of the leaders of the Military Police meeting with Commander Erwin left before we spoke to him. Once there, she first spoke of what I've told her what happened in Trost today, then she told us about a note Eren gave her yesterday.
The contents inside...were earth-shattering.
Dropping off of Spirit, I follow Hange and Moblit towards the house, but before we enter, she stops and looks at me seriously. "Elijah, until the time is right, do not speak of what I said of Eren. I'll deem it necessary when your friends should know. I rather keep it hidden than spark some of them to action."
I nod. "Yes, ma'am."
"I rather not let you witness what we're about to do either. I can order you to wait with your friends. But ever since you joined me, I've always allowed you to have a choice to participate, so your participation now is your choice. Just know...it might not be as pretty as capturing Titans."
"SC, I spent God knows how long in a Titan's mouth, relying on clawing my way out to survive. I think I can handle a little...conversation."
Moblit turns to me. "I have nothing against it myself, but as the Section Commander said, until we're ready to tell everyone else, you keep whatever is said between those present."
I nod. "Understood, sir." With that said, we enter the house, making a beeline for the basement with little interaction with the other cadets. I bet they were confused when I followed Hange and Moblit downstairs. Hange forcefully opens the door to the room where Levi and the Military Police soldier with him, Sannes by my memory, are located.
"Sorry I'm late! You're still going at it?"
Levi wears an apron and gloves. "Yeah, I'm pretty new to this."
Hange steps over to the bonded Sannes and Levi. "Sannes! You should know I'm also a novice at human torture, so please bear with me!" She picks up a pair of pliers in anticipation, though Sannes begins to protest.
"W-Wait! What do you even want?! Who the hell tortures without asking questions?!"
"Oh, right. We do have some questions for you." I feel my stomach churning at the very thought that Levi tortured this man without even questioning him. He's bleeding from his nose, his right eye is black and closed, and he has some facial bruising. The Captain really went to town before we got here. "Where is Eren and Historia? Why are you after Historia? What's the Reiss family?"
Not a second after Levi closes his mouth, Hange gets to work. "Too slow! Can't you see we're in a hurry?!" I hear the separation of a fingernail from flesh along with the yell that definitely reached the ears of my friends upstairs.
Upstairs
"It's starting again..."
"I feel like the screams are louder than when the captain did it."
"Even though I know It's to save those two, it makes me sick."
"let's face it... We're criminals now," Armin says woefully. "The enemies we're fighting... We're not killing them because they're trying to eat us. It's because their views are different... No, just the group they belong to. And for that...their lives..."
"Armin..."
Armin lowers his head to his arms on the table. "All of us... We're not good people anymore."
Downstairs
"Sorry, I can't peel nails as well as you. Just how many did you peel to get so good?"
"Too many to count." Oh? He says that without issue? Fucking disgusting...no, revolting. He doesn't sound remorseful for his previous actions, I look down to his right hand, all five fingernails removed from the root. I look to my right hand, seeing some of my own fingernails beginning to grow back, I'm glad I didn't have to feel them when I was getting out of that Titan. Levi has a point. If the first wasn't enough, then he's not gonna talk at all, at least what we want him to talk about. "Within these Walls, do you know why war has never broken out? It's because the First Interior Squad dirtied our hands to protect the peace. A teacher too smart for their own good, a stupid couple who tried to fly, a whore from some ranch in the sticks, humanity has only made it this far because we erased them! You should be thanking us! I've never seen anyone get more pleasure out of torture than you guys! You're monsters! But I'm not even afraid. I... I have... I have the King, I... I believe in the King and peace in the Walls. That all the things we've done were justified. But... To think it hurts this much... Go on and torture me to death already. That's all I ever did with this blood-stained life of mine."
"..." Fucking monsters...but-
"Time for a break." Levi leads us out. I steal a glance at Sannes, cutting a curious glare at him. Of all his words, only one phrase made me think twice. Why would the First Interior Squad stop people from flying?
"That's troubling... I'm beginning to feel sorry for him." Hange turns to me and nods. Reaching down, I pick up the other soldier Moblit asked me to get minutes earlier. After picking him up, I shove him a few steps up to Levi.
"Quit shoving me. It hurts..."
I gare at him. "It's cute you think you have any room to make demands."
Levi holds a knife to the soldier's back as Hange points to a piece of paper in her hand. "You're pathetic. It only took one nail to make you talk. Sannes doesn't have any nails left. You're nothing like him."
"Like I care? That was his decision. The guy never shuts up about peace and the King. The rest of us hate him. Do us a favor and kill him already."
"We're not letting it happen until he verifies your story."
"You already got what you wanted out of me. Gimme a break. Will I be getting a bed in my cell, or what?" We walk up the steps, hoping that the script does work on Sannes. If he loses his faith, he will loosen his tongue.
"Reiss is the true royal family..."
"The true heir...is Historia?"
Hange nods to our collective shock. "In other words, both Eren and Historia are likely wherever Rod Reiss is." She turns to Moblit, who pastes a picture of Rod Reiss on the wall.
"That's him."
"Historia..."
I frown, letting my emotions get to me for a moment. "What does the bastard want with her?"
"That is for us to find out."
"I'm sorry for everything..."
