Between two worlds

by Angie296

Mizuki ends up inside the walls without remembering where she came from. All she knows is that she does not belong to that world, and that she wants to return home. To do so, she has no choice but to rely on the Survey Corps, and on her golden eyes capable of tinging the color of blood, inherited from her father, the last descendant of the Uchiha clan. Levi X OC

13. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: I see signs now all the time that you're not dead, you're sleeping. I believe in anything that brings you back home to me - part 2

Bloc Party - Signs

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September 849

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"Willy, will you stop pacing back and forth like that? You're making me sick."

"Oh, leave him alone, Fanny. His girlfriend is finally coming to see him today; he's been on edge since yesterday!"

"She's not my girlfriend, Tom! How many times do I have to tell you?"

"But you guys write each other all the time!"

"Yes, but she's just a friend!"

"I think she likes you. She's even coming to this world-forsaken camp just to see you!"

"Things aren't like that. Trust me, I know what I'm saying."

"Have you even tried to confess?"

"Twice, and the second time, after rejecting me, she amputated my foot."

"Wait wait wait...is that the chick?!"

"Yeah, and I really want to make a good impression on her. So please don't tease me too much in her presence..."

"You were right to say that. Hear that, cadets? You treat Instructor Anderson with deference today!"

"What...!" Auxiliary-Instructor Willy Anderson, former soldier of the Survey Corps, gasped and, after turning his head, realized that a good chunk of the 104th Cadet Course of the Southern Training Camp - and, especially, some of its most accomplished but also most troublesome members - had crowded around the group of soldiers and eavesdropped very intently on the ongoing conversation. "How long have you been there?"

"Long enough to know that you desire our cooperation," said Ymir, a tall girl with a lean physique and a sharp joke always ready on the tip of her tongue. "Of course, our adherence to the agreement will depend on what you offer in return..."

"Ymir!" exclaimed Christa, her bright blue eyes posed in mute pleading.

"Knock it off. It is unworthy of a soldier to address his superiors in such a way," Reiner reprimanded her, with his muscular arms crossed over his chest, turning a look of open reproach on her.

"Don't bother me, big man. No one asked your opinion, and you're certainly not my boss. However, if you're the one asking me, Christa, with this expression, I might even give it a thought..."

"I CAN'T WAIT! Can you imagine? A real soldier from the Survey Corps is coming here!" Eren Jaegar was in a state of nervous excitement far worse than Willy's: his whole body trembled at the idea of the arrival of a real soldier - one of the heroes exposing himself to untold dangers to free humanity from the yoke of giants - and he couldn't help but constantly shift poses or move his arms or legs in a vain attempt to somehow discharge that energy.

"Um... Assistant Instructor Anderson, too, actually..." tried to correct Armin, timidly, but Eren would not listen.

"Do you think she will tell us about all the giants she has killed if we ask her?"

"Eren, you should stop this nonsense," Mikasa reprimanded him in an icy tone.

"Oh, knock it off, Mikasa! Leave me alone!"

"Ah, no wonder you're happy, you suicidal fool. One of your fellow lunatics is coming." With a laugh of mockery and defiance, Jean elbowed his archrival in the stomach. "So you can ask her to fill you in on all the atrocious ways other crazies like you have died..."

"What did you say, Kirschtein?! You looking for trouble?!"

"Come on guys, let's keep calm..." stepped in Marco, literally interposing himself between the two, with his open hands each resting on the chest of a contender, because by now that scene and especially the way it would have evolved if no one had intervened to prevent it were known to all the 104 Cadet Course members.

"Rather, you'd better ask her how they eat in the Survey Corps," Sasha muttered, yawning conspicuously.

"You better be careful, Sasha. Did you hear that the girl cut off Anderson's leg!"

"Whatever, Connie, but she didn't eat it off him, did she? It's not like she's a giant!"

"You never know..."

"Just be quiet, you morons. Your giant is coming." With the bored expression that never left her, Annie pointed with a nod to a wagon approaching toward the barracks used as a communal canteen, school building and dormitories; Berthold, who stood next to her, gave her a strange look, in which a careful observer who knew what to look for would have discerned, without even too much difficulty, a shadow of veiled reproach.

As the vehicle, at a fairly brisk speed, made a small turn along the road, approaching the clearing where the instructors and recruits were resting, a little figure who until a second before had been flailing about to attract their attention rested her hand on the rail of the wagon and, taking leverage from that, sprang up, elegantly gathering her legs underneath her.

"Mizuki! Avoid killing yourself when you are under my charge, please!" reprimanded her Captain Dita Neiss, driving the contraption.

The girl, as soon as she had gracefully touched the ground, straightened up, a bright and not at all intimidated smile attesting her blatant disinterest in the rebuke she had just received. "Willy!" she burst out, her tone of voice warm and genuinely enthusiastic as she ran to meet the group thronging the clearing. The summoned man did not have time to respond to the greeting: she had already caught up with him and, with an eagerness that would have been excessive even for a person still endowed with both legs, jumped to his neck. Squeezed in that mighty embrace, the two staggered, and it was only because of Mizuki's good balance that they did not fall ruinously to the ground.

"That one doesn't look so much like a giant to me, actually," murmured Sasha in Connie's ear.

"I didn't think I'd ever say this, but Anderson's girl is not bad," Ymir commented sincerely impressed, her arm languidly resting on Christa's shoulder.

Meanwhile, Mizuki was peppering with questions and remarks poor Willy Anderson, who, turned as red as and perhaps more than his hair, stammered in an attempt to provide her with meaningful answers. "Oh!" she suddenly said and interrupted the interrogation, on noticing the recruits staring at her insistently exchanging excited mutterings. "Hi. My name is Mizuki Onizuka, I'm a soldier and the medical officer of the Survey Corps! Pleased to meet you!" she introduced herself, as if the uniform she wore and, more importantly, the famous Wings of Freedom that stood proud and untamed on it could leave any doubt.

Jean shook his head, assuming an annoyed expression. "Oh, you really shouldn't have said that..."

Mizuki did not have time to question why her presentation had been met with that sarcastic and sibylline phrase, which seemed to prophesy a development of the situation in an unpleasant direction: the explanation to her perplexity, in fact, leapt out at her like a cricket, in the form of a little boy with brown hair and huge green eyes, visibly overexcited. "How many giants did you kill?! What is it like now outside the Walls?! What was your most amazing feat?!"

The girl, taken aback, stared at him for a few moments in silence, thinking that if in her place had been Oluo, the young boy in front of her, curious and inflamed by an intense and at times disturbing passion, would have really had bread for his teeth.

Noticing Mizuki's hesitation, and mistaking it for annoyance at his own impetuous approach, the little boy tapped his open hand on his forehead. "Oh, excuse me! I was rude." So he brought a hand to his heart, standing at attention. "Cadet Eren Jaeger of the 104th Cadet Course at Training Camp South, sir!"

"No need for all these formalities, it's not like I'm an officer." Mizuki chuckled and waved her hand, as if to emphasize the rather low, not to say zero, odds of that eventuality - she becoming an officer - ever occurring. "I know who you are," she added, winking at him. It certainly did not take the brains of Lavinia or Commander Smith to guess that this nervous little boy was none other than the recruit who had become famous for his unhealthy tendency to communicate to anyone in front of him, no matter whether appropriately or not, his plans to exterminate all giants. "My teammate Keiji is eagerly awaiting you."

Eren's big green eyes lit up. "Really?!"

Suddenly, Mizuki sensed an ominous presence looming over her, like a dense cloud of lightning and rain that, slow and inexorable, slides across the sky until it darkens the valley. A tall girl, with fine, elegant features that reminded her of someone without her being able to bring his identity into focus, stared at her grimly and with the very clear intent to intimidate her from behind Eren's shoulder.

"Ah!" inserted Jean, clapping an open hand on Eren's back in a seemingly friendly gesture, but which from the grimace that was painted on the boy's face must have been quite painful. "Are you happy, you suicidal fool? With her stories, you'll have some concrete material to imagine your own death with!"

"Jean! What are you trying to imply?!"

"Nothing, nothing..."

"And who would this horse-faced one be?" asked Mizuki candidly, squaring Jean with interest.

"Horse face?! How dare you?!"

Connie approached the small group, letting out a laugh and running a hand over the shaved nape of his neck, as if he still had hair. "See that you look like a horse? If someone who has never seen you in her life says so, it must be really true!"

Ignoring Jean's red, piqued face, Mizuki cast a glance at the rest of the cadets who had crowded around her. "Rather, and leaving aside equines, there is one person I would really like to meet."

"Who?" asked Eren, obligingly, despite his obvious disappointment that he was not the one who aroused the attention of one of the heroes of the Survey Corps.

"Well, I don't even know if she's still alive at this point, although I hope she is. I'm referring to that girl who stole a potato and offered less than half of it to the instructor who caught her..."

Mizuki's request was interrupted by a general roar of laughter and booing, all directed at the lanky girl who had stiffened upon hearing those words.

"Oh! Potato girl! You've become famous!" snickered Jean, pleased that the general hilarity, relentless as it could be among kids as young as fourteen forced to live in close quarters, had shifted from him to Sasha.

"Is that you?!" Mizuki approached her with a huge smile on her lips, expressing sincere admiration, and held out a hand. "I just wanted to tell you that I think you are incredible. You're truly my idol. Please seriously consider joining the Survey Corps."

Sasha, still stiff and suspicious, returned Mizuki's squeeze, under Eren's overflowing gaze of envy. "I will take that into consideration," she replied, using a formal tone that did not suit her very well.

"Good! Now I'm satisfied!" Mizuki clapped her hands a few times, and took a step away from Sasha. "Now, Willy, how about we...?"

Fortunately for her, the genes of her father and all their ancestors had been passed on to her without incident at conception, and lately they had been sharpened by the hard training sessions with the captain, from which she always came out bruised and sore. Had it not been so, she would never have been quick enough to notice the figure pointing straight in her direction, as determinedly as a deer charging its rival, and avoid - even if only by a hair's breadth - the mighty headbutt of instructor Shadis.

With a groan of surprise, Mizuki crouched on the ground, and the man's blow fell on the empty space where her head had been just moments before.

"What the...?" she gasped, sliding nimbly to the side to get out of the attack range of the bald guy wearing an instructor's uniform. The guy, however, did not desist and, with a mighty snort that resembled the cries of a pawing bull, returned to the charge.

For about a minute, under the dumbfounded gaze of the recruits and instructor assistants, Shadis's head kept snapping like a viper in pursuit of Mizuki, in an attempt to come down on her head and give her a memorable beating. The scene - which, while having much of a comic quality, did not make even Ymir smile, such was the ferocity with which the instructor pursued his prey - went on until the girl reached the wagon filled with boxes on which she and Dita had arrived, and circumnavigated it, so as to put the vehicle between herself and her assailant.

"May I know what on earth you want from me?!"

"It's quite obvious!" replied Shadis, who was scrutinizing her relentlessly from the other side of the wagon, with a snarl.

"Sure, it's obvious you want to kill me!"

"Only to headbutt you," the man pointed out, with a certain sass. "That sounds like the least. Has anyone ever heard of a soldier worth his salt who didn't go through the training program?! I can tell from your face that you are a debauchee, I really wonder what's going through Smith's head lately!"

"I assure you that I take down giants just fine even without someone headbutting me!" retorted Mizuki, reflecting that she, on the other hand, knew someone who had become an excellent soldier even without training.

"Really that chick hasn't been trained at a camp?" muttered Jean, indignantly. "'Meaning we have to freeze our asses off and croak from fatigue to acquire the right to become soldiers, and that's how she got into the army?"

"Coming from someone who wants to join the Gendarmerie to loll around safely, well protected by the Walls, and dump the work on others, you really make me laugh," hissed Eren, ready to defend every member of the Survey Corps to the hilt.

"Quiet, boys," tried to soothe them Marco, again interposing himself - the umpteenth that day - between the two boys. "Surely there's a reason she was able to enlist while skipping the three years of training."

"That's for sure. She doesn't strike me as clueless," Armin muttered to himself, looking over his shoulder at Mizuki, still barricaded behind the wagon. Her movements, he thought, had a feline, shambling quality, typical of someone used to moving and thinking with precision and speed. "She had only an instant to notice Shadis's charge, yet she reacted promptly."

Dita Neiss had flanked the group of recruits and, met with a desperate and confused look from Mizuki, shrugged his shoulders. "Mizuki, meet the famous and uncompromising instructor Shadis. When I told him who you were just now, I think he muttered something about wanting to check with his own eyes how gutless you were."

Mizuki gave him a fairly eloquent glare that did not need to be translated into words.

"And I found full confirmation of that!" shouted Shadis, in his powerful tenor voice, pointing a calloused finger at his prey. "Look at her hiding, Neiss! And that would be... what did you call her? A brilliant soldier? What the heck is Smith up to?!"

Dita Neiss, who had long known Ketih Shadis - the embodiment, in his opinion, of the saying barking dog doesn't bite - listened placidly to those recriminations, chewing a blade of grass between his lips. The captain had enlisted in the Survey Corps under Shadis, and he knew how much every death outside the walls weighed on his former commander's conscience. That is why, having left command, he had become one of the most uncompromising and ruthless instructors; especially now that the age of enlistment had dropped even further, he considered it essential to train recruits with firmness and vigor so as to prepare them as much as possible for the horrors they would encounter outside the walls or - why not - even inside them, considering the tragedy that had occurred in Shiganshina just four years earlier. He imagined what it meant, for him, to be confronted with someone like Mizuki, who was being sent out on scouting trips, from his point of view, in utter disarray. If only he had seen her in action... That girl possessed nerves of steel, and an almost animal instinct.

The state the instructor was in posed a huge problem: Dita needed Shadis in a good mood, otherwise he would get in the way of unloading and running in the devices with unsolicited suggestions and criticism, giving him hives and slowing down his work; at the same time, he needed someone to keep Mizuki's temper tantrums under control. It was for this reason - that is, so that the current obstacles that stood between him and a peaceful performance of his job would tear each other apart, freeing him from the onerous task of supervising them - that he said, in a casual tone, "If you don't believe it, Shadis, try her."

"You can bet on it! That's exactly what I'm going to do!" Shadis pointed his finger at Mizuki again, as if by doing so he could nullify the distance that separated them. "Today you will train with my recruits, and we will see how brilliant you are."

The girl crossed her arms over her chest, and turned her nose up in an uncharacteristically defiant manner. "I don't think so! Today is my day off, and I know military regulations perfectly well: no one has the power to force me to do anything, not even the supreme commander!"

"A debauchee! Gutless! I knew it!"

Dita Neiss sighed. He knew perfectly well how much it mattered to Shadis to assure himself of the skills of that improvised soldier, and he knew equally well that if the instructor failed to satisfy his craving, it would terribly complicate the unloading and testing of the devices stored in the boxes crammed on the wagon. "Mizuki..."

"Don't try it, Captain Neiss! You won't change my mind!"

Fortunately, he thought, Mizuki was an easy subject to manipulate, perhaps more so than Shadis himself. "If you will indulge Instructor Shadis, when Levi punishes you ordering you to shovel horse dung in the stables, for a couple of times I will cover your ass and not tell him you spend your time lying on the straw reading."

Neiss had not yet finished speaking, that Mizuki, shrugging her shoulders suddenly as if she had had a shock, exclaimed, "I'll do it!"

Willy, forgotten by everyone - Shadis, colleagues, recruits, and even Mizuki - let out a groan of disappointment at the total defeat of the plans he had so carefully worked out to allow his guest to have a pleasant day and at the same time show off a little and make a good impression on her.

"Getting talked into it like this. Gutless," muttered Shadis, although he appeared pleased by the prospect of being able to test the skills of the petite girl who had managed to dodge all his assaults with ease. Then, without adding further insults, he turned around, heading for the training ground.

"Miss Onizuka!" Eren called her, as she cautiously circled the wagon, not taking her eyes off Shadis. "Did I hear wrong, or are you being punished by...? But is it really him? I mean, are we really talking about that Captain Levi? Mankind's strongest soldier?"

Mizuki grimaced, and absentmindedly rubbed an ear, as if someone had just tugged on it. "Him in flesh and blood. It seems it stretches his nerves, committing abuses of power against me."

"But this is unbelievable! I don't know what I would give to be in you place!"

The girl squared him overthinkingly, and her golden irises lingered covetously on the boy's tiny ears. "Well, if you really insist, when you join the Corps, we can share my punishments..."

"He is not going into the Survey Corps!" blurted Mikasa, just before grabbing Eren by the waist and lifting him up as if she had just picked up a twig; holding him tightly as he squirmed with all his might, she walked away in the same direction as Shadis.

"Unbelievable...," Mizuki murmured. She knew only one person who could move human beings by weight without losing one iota of the elegance and lightness that connoted hie way of moving. "Could it be that she is the highly gifted recruit Willy spoke of?"

Her suspicions found confirmation shortly thereafter, when Shadis started the daily training, which, that day, took place at a pace and manner on the verge of survival; so much so that Mizuki found herself thinking several times that scouting, by comparison, seemed like a pleasant Sunday trip. Mikasa turned out to be just the person she expected. "She's just like the captain in a skirt," she nodded, impressed, as she studied the motions of the girl using the three-dimensional maneuvering device, hovering in the air with the same ease and indifference with which Mizuki would perform trivial gestures like bringing a cup of tea to her lips or combing her hair.

It was a real hellish day for Mizuki. In addition to performing the recruits' exercises and answering Eren's incessant questions, she had to pay constant attention to defend herself from the sudden attacks of Shadis, who had not yet given up on the idea of headbutting her and who returned to the attack at the least opportune moments.

Even the recruits, who at first had shown signs of ill-concealed awe of her, soon loosened up: indeed, it was evident from the start that Mizuki, despite being a soldier and older than them by a few years, acted almost like an overgrown child. She joked about everything, especially herself, and even when she failed at some exercise she would hunch her shoulders and throw her head back to laugh more comfortably, under the stern - but, undoubtedly, not without a certain respect - gaze of Shadis. Thus, the recruits timidly began to ask her questions, address her remarks and ask her for advice; to the former, she answered as best she could, the latter she listened to with attention and participation, and the thirds she avoided dispensing, with many turns of phrase, determined to not take responsibility of changing the lives of any of those lads even by accident.

She tried several times to sneak away from the training camp, but Shadis was breathing down her neck and, with each failed escape attempt, shouted a furious "debauchee" at her and tried to knock her out with yet another headbutt, which only her Uchiha nature and training with Levi allowed her to dodge at the last. Only around dinnertime did one of her plans succeed, and Mizuki managed to escape her captor's control by taking refuge behind the barracks where the recruits' dormitories were located.

With a sigh, the girl abandoned herself against the wall and let herself slide to the ground. "Damn that Shadis," she gritted through clenched teeth and, closing her eyelids, rubbed them with a finger. "He made me sweat on my day off more than I do in a whole week of training at HQ. It's even worse than the captain and his punishments!"

An icy object brushed gently against her right cheek. "Shadis can be a bastard, and he also knows how to squeeze people like lemons; in my opinion, though, you did well. Although he will never admit it, you impressed him."

Mizuki suddenly opened her eyes and found a bottle of cool water swaying lazily in front of her face. "Thank you," she said, taking it, and as she brought it to her lips, she looked up at the muscular figure of the boy leaning against the wall a step away from her. "Reiner, right?"

"Right. Good memory, considering you were introduced to pretty much all the recruits in our class today."

"If I remember you, it's because you stood out."

Reiner scrutinized her with a somewhat puzzled expression, unsure of how to interpret the phrase: was it a kiss-ass tactic to thank him for the water or an attempt at flirtation?

Noticing his confusion, Mizuki took another sip from the bottle, and smiled. "I've been watching you today. You take care of people. Others trust you, and when there's a decision to be made it's you they turn to. Heck, you don't know me, yet you even took the trouble to bring some supplies to a poor persecuted woman. You are a good leader, Reiner."

Reiner shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the subject as if he took no pleasure in talking about it, but an imperceptible flicker in his brown irises revealed that, in any case, the compliment had not been unwelcome to him. "Someone has to do it."

"You say it like it's a constriction!" chuckled Mizuki, setting the bottle on the ground beside her; then she bent her knees against her chest, rested her crossed arms on them and, on top of them, one cheek so as to turn her face in the direction of the boy.

Reiner barely tightened his lips, and dropped the comment. "You also seem to be reliable..."

"Who? Me? Try again and you'll be luckier!" snorted the girl, barely curling her lips into a sardonic smirk.

"You worry about others, though... Even with Christa, during training…"

Reiner was referring to Mizuki's aid to the tiny and very sweet recruit who, for the past few months, had been appearing in his dreams, forcing him to wake up sweaty and overwhelmed with guilt. In performing a complicated maneuver with the device, in fact, Christa had fallen from the tree, injuring her arm.

"Oh, that! If I intervened, it's because I was threatened by that tall, cocky chick..." said Mizuki, with a faux-innocent air.

"Ymir." Reiner spelled the name condescendingly, as if apologizing for the impertinence displayed by his companion. "Yes, I heard she threatened to hold you down while Shadis tried to headbutt you if you didn't treat Christa."

"Yeah..."

"Maybe, but it didn't seem like the threat scared you much. It was more like..."

Like it amused her that someone was threatening her - with sufficiently serious intentions, knowing Ymir - in order to force her to take care of an injured person, an act that as a doctor she would most likely have performed anyway.

Strange girl. No, an imperious voice, which reminded him eerily of his mother's, corrected him: strange demon.

"No," Mizuki conceded, with a mischievous chuckle. "In fact, this Ymir of yours didn't scare me at all."

Although she did not make it explicit, there was a clear implication in her statement: this Ymir could not scare her.

"All the more reason, this confirms my earlier remark. You also care about others."

"Oh, yes. That I do. But I'm not the responsible type. I like to think and make decisions only as far as my own life is concerned, not others'." At that point in the speech, Mizuki lifted her face and pointed it straight ahead, as if to prevent Reiner from catching sight of the bitter expression that surfaced in touching certain topics. "Only a superior who mistook me for someone else could lay on me responsibilities that I don't want and am unable to handle..."

"Did that happen to you?" the boy asked pointedly, crouching down beside her with a hint of urgency in his voice.

Mizuki winced slightly, perhaps at the question, perhaps at his sudden gesture, but she did not move. "More or less. Yes, we can say so."

"And who did he mistake you for?"

"With my mother..." she answered in a huff, then turned her head again and contemplated Reiner's face, tense and serious. "And to you?"

"To me?"

"Who did they swap you with?"

Reiner hesitated for a long time, so long that Mizuki was convinced that at any moment he would get up and leave, probably annoyed by the question, not without first retrieving the bottle with a disdainful gesture to take it away with him. A tiny, arrogant part of herself, however, confided that perhaps he would answer her. After dealing with the captain and his long silences for a year, Reiner's prolonged pause for thought did not faze or embarrass her at all. She leaned the back of her head against the wall, and prepared to wait by watching the clouds chasing each other across the sky already tinged with the colors of sunset. The boy at her side also kept his gaze pointed in that direction but, for some curious reason, Mizuki felt that even though they both had the same scenery under their noses, they were not seeing the same things. The same clouds, the same sky, the same answers to the questions that kept them awake at night.

Then, when even she had now lost hope of receiving an answer, Reiner cleared his throat.

"A comrade of mine who died."

"Ah..."

"He ... was always the one we ... that is, my childhood friends and I relied on. And when he died..."

"You found yourself lost," Mizuki completed for him, on realizing his difficulty in finishing the concept, drumming a finger on her knee. "So you took his place."

Another long silence. "Somebody had to do it," was all Reiner said, and his shoulders stiff with tension were shot through with a shudder at the memory of the instant when, taking Marcel's place, everything had changed. He had changed.

"Mmm." Mizuki grabbed a strand of hair and curled it around a finger. "Is that why you're here?"

Despite the vagueness of the question, Reiner understood perfectly what she was alluding to. "No. If I became a..." He interrupted abruptly, stopping just in time before uttering the word warrior. So - marveling at the absurd situation he had gotten himself into, entangled in an exchange of confidences dangerously tending toward the truth with one of the island's demons, a strange demon who seemed gifted with the rare ability to ask the right questions - he moistened his lips, to take in time and regain full control of himself. More than her questions, however, it was that girl who seemed to draw the truth out of his lips; and, what was worse, unbelievable as it was, Reiner felt peaceful, at the mercy of a peculiar as well as insane feeling that, even if he really revealed to her the unmentionable secret he kept in his heart, she would not be grossed out by it at all. "...soldier, it was because of my parents. My mother's, precisely."

"She wanted you to be a soldier?"

"Yeah. I want to make my mother proud of me before I stand before her again..."

"What? You haven't seen her since... since when?"

"Four years now."

"Are you in a quarrel?"

"Yes... I mean no, not really."

Mizuki furrowed her brow, struck by the mysterious yet ambiguous answer, and glanced at him to assess whether he was teasing her or not.

"Before I return to... to her, however, I must complete my mission. As a soldier," Reiner hastened to add. Realizing that he had already compromised his own position sufficiently and, having had enough of being questioned in that underhanded way - although he would have struggled to describe the deceptions she had employed to trick him in that way, he was equally certain that there had been a scam somewhere - he turned the same question back to her, "As for you, instead?"

"Ah! Well, the reason I became a..." She too interrupted the sentence, curiously enough, at the same point as Reiner. The word ninja had almost come out, innocent and dangerous, of her mouth, but thank goodness and despite her somewhat scatterbrained nature, she had managed to stop herself in time. "... soldier, it's because there's something I wanted to do."

"Namely?"

"Restore my family name," Mizuki replied without hesitation, only to immediately bite her lower lip in annoyance.

Reiner raised an eyebrow. "Did they do something bad?"

"More or less..." she replied vaguely, wondering if the expression something bad was adequate to express the extent of the slaughter done by the Uchiha clan, starting with her deceased and never-known grandparents, moving on to her multi-murderous uncle, and ending on a high note with her father who had threatened to kill the five Kage.

"So you do this by the will of your parents, too?"

"Oh, no, quite the opposite. My parents didn't want me to follow in their footsteps."

"Were they soldiers?"

Mizuki, who was already eating her hands at yet another inappropriate outburst, grunted a listless and unconvinced, "Yes, more or less."

Yes, more or less?, wondered Reiner perplexedly. He would have liked to think more carefully about that strange admission, but he decided it was best to harrass her to prevent the roles from being reversed and for her to go back to asking him certain insidious and uncomfortable questions that it seemed impossible, for him, to escape. "How did they take it?"

"Not very well ... Actually, at the moment I haven't seen my father for a while either. But ... but I hope I can meet him again someday," murmured the girl, her gaze fixed on the sky, and her thoughts racing to her father's face, with its sharp, hard features that reflected his uncompromising personality.

"You even went against your parents' wishes to pursue this goal of yours... it must be something really important." With a sigh, Reiner gathered his legs to his chest and rested his forearms on his knees. "I envy you..."

As she had learned to do with the captain and his long pauses for thought, Mizuki waited patiently for the boy to find the words, the strength or the intention to go on and to make more explicit that statement whose motives she could not quite understand.

"You chose for yourself, and you didn't give a damn about what others thought or wanted... I wish I had the same strength as you, and your courage..."

Mizuki's eyes widened in surprise, and an embarrassed chuckle escaped her lips. "Oh, it's not like I've accomplished who knows what noteworthy feat, and it's also not true that I did it all by myself. I have a childhood friend, Loki, who has supported me since I was a child. And when in announcing them that I was going to be a ... a soldier, I saw my mother crying in despair, I was about to give in. I didn't want to make her sad. I was going to give in, yes, but then ... Then I thought that it was my life. That if I wasted it following someone else's wishes and expectations, and not what was important to me, it would be meaningless. That I didn't have to become someone else just to satisfy them, even if it was my parents and even if they cared for legitimate reasons. No, the more I think about it, the more I don't think there's anything to be so proud of: I was just being selfish."

In heeding the girl's voice articulating persuasive words, words that, just four years earlier, he would have killed for someone to address him, Reiner squinted his eyes. A barely-there breeze, heralding the evening, caressed his tanned cheeks and arms stretched out in front of him, infusing him with a sense of well-being he rarely experienced.

If only someone had addressed the same words to him four years earlier...

If only it had happened, then perhaps he would have been able to choose a different path. A path that did not involve breaking through, in the form of a titan, the gate of a city inhabited by humans, opening a gateway to the giants that roamed outside the walls, and bringing death and destruction, screams and blood...

But it had not turned out that way. Four years earlier, Reiner Braun had made a clear-cut choice that provided for no second thoughts, and now he found himself on a demon-infested island, whose deceptive whispers and alluring, mendacious claims tempted him to embrace the nefarious and immoral principles - she herself had admitted her own selfishness, had she not? - which over the centuries had caused countless wars and massacres, and to which those damned people had not yet abdicated.

"And in any case, I think - and I am sincere, I assure you - that choosing to do something we would not want to do in order to make someone we love proud or happy is an equally valid life choice. Not everyone could make it: just look at me, I wasn't able to do it myself. It shows that you, even before you were inspired by that mate of yours, were a person who puts others before himself, big boy."

That appellation - big boy - was accompanied by the sensation of a hand gently and somewhat cheekily ruffling his short, frizzy hair. When he opened his eyes again, she retracted the hand she kept resting on his head, as naturally as if it were a habitual gesture and one she had just repeated for the umpteenth time, and gave him a bright, unreserved smile.

A demon. A strange demon endowed with the frightening power to enchant him.

"I hope you don't mind, but it's my habit to give nicknames to people I like. And for being fourteen years old, you really are a closet..."

Reiner felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment. "No, I don't mind... although I'm seventeen years old, not fourteen..."

"WHAT?!" Mizuki broke away from the wall and rested her knees on the ground, rotating her body so that she faced Reiner. "Are you telling me that I've been playing the part of a worldly woman with someone who is only a year younger than me?!"

The temperature of the boy's face, which was already hot, rose further. So she was even older than him, despite her stature and petite build. The detail, rather than intimidating him or causing him indignation at being treated like a baby, aroused a fair amount of excitement in him.

"Ah! Geez! And I wanted to act like a phenomena!" she exclaimed, running her fingers over her forehead as if to wash away the shame she had just suffered, and then she indulged in a thunderous, crystalline laugh, filled with a fierce irony at herself. "What a loser I am! Really pathetic! When I tell Loki about this..."

Reiner, however, would not have called her pathetic or a loser.

Pretty, rather, but in a different way than Christa.

Exciting. There, that term sounded much more appropriate to him.

Her presence was like a punch in the stomach. She had something harsh, almost unpleasant, that forced those around her to acknowledge her existence, to take note of it, and at the same time to become aware of aspects of oneself that one would rather pretend to ignore.

Of course, this was one of the island's demons. What else could he expect, from a member of that wicked people?

Yet...

Her laugh had a melodious, harmonious, enchanting sound.

"Reiner."

At that call, the boy turned his head sharply. Berthold peered at him a few steps away with an indecipherable expression in which, however, Reiner seemed to catch an imperceptible flash of reproach.

"Oh, you're ... um ..." Mizuki, still shaken by quivers of laughter, tapped her cheek with a finger, hoping for enlightenment. "Bart, right?"

"Berthold," the other corrected her in an icy but polite tone. "Instructor Shadis is looking for you."

An inarticulate and very unfeminine groan escaped the girl, triggered by the discovery that the lovely camp instructor still persisted in the unhealthy idea of testing the depth of her debauchery, and by the prospect that, in all likelihood, not even the night, which she and Dita Neiss would spend there, would offer her any relief. "But that man is a curse!" Propping her shoulders against the wall, she pulled herself to her feet and, after wiping the dust off her uniform pants with a few strokes, turned to the two boys who were staring at her - Reiner so as not to be forced to cross his comrade's gaze, Bethold as if he was keeping an eye on a wild and unpredictable beast. "I'd better go; maybe if I move fast enough I'll be able to hide before he finds me. You guys coming with me?"

"In a moment," the blond guy answered her, certain that Berthold had some communication to convey him or a muffled rebuke to deliver.

Mizuki shrugged her shoulders and walked away, accompanied by the gaze of the two boys.

Reiner stood up in turn, calmly, and finally resolved to move a few steps in Berthold's direction. "What is it?" he then asked him, with a slight tone of defiance. "We have to pretend we don't despise them if we want the cover to hold, and acting friendly helps to gather information, doesn't it?"

"I didn't tell you anything," stressed out the other, as usual trying to avoid any form of conflict or stance. Then he bent his torso slightly forward - as if afraid that an invisible listener might eavesdrop on the conversation - and whispered, "I got the signal. He wants to see us tonight."

"Tonight? With Survey Corps soldiers in the way?" asked Reiner, astonished. It had been almost a year - no, maybe a year and a half - that he had not arranged a meeting, so much so that they had begun to suspect he was dead; and now, after endless months of silence and uncertainty, he remembered their existence at the worst time of all?

"I don't know what to tell you," Berthold cut in short, with a shrug. "Showing up or not, however, is not something that depends on our will," he added, clearly relieved that the decision to accept the invitation was not his to make, and that whatever consequences would result from the summons could never be imputed or recriminated to him.

Reiner nodded his head in assent, and suddenly caught all the absurdity and deep presumption that permeated the persuasive words of the Survey Corps soldier Mizuki Onizuka, of that little demon with whom he had just exchanged dangerous and liberating confidences, which had instilled in his chest a sense of unease and at the same time quiet exaltation.

That demon truly believed that Reiner had been allowed to choose his own destiny, that he was voluntarily, without compulsion, walking the path laid out before him.

But things were not like that at all.

He had never really had a choice.

.

They slipped out of the dormitory in the middle of the night, quietly, without waking their comrades - Connie snoring with one leg dangling from the bunk bed; Armin sleeping as still as a statue; Eren mumbling disconnected phrases in his sleep, probably threats directed at the giants; Jean breathing heavily, deep in a pleasant dream judging by the satisfied grin painted on his thin lips; Marco rolling in the blankets restlessly foretelling a probable early autumn storm for the next day.

Walking close to the walls of the barracks, shielded by the shadows of the buildings that hid them from the moonlight, they met up with Annie and, together with her, entered the grove that bordered one side of the training camp. They continued for a few minutes, immersed in a dense, dead stillness, until they reached the small clearing that had been the scene of previous summonses, and there they waited without speaking, each immersed in his own thoughts.

"Good evening, my brave and valiant warriors."

Suddenly, a voice with a musical timbre signaled to the three guys in pajamas the arrival of the person they had been waiting for.

A tall, thin figure appeared out of the darkness, appearing from behind a massive log; it was impossible to tell whether he had just reached the clearing or had been there before them, and had consciously remained hidden from their view, enjoying the spectacle of the nervousness that gripped them.

"At last," commented dryly Annie, who had never let his manners intimidate her. "You're late."

"Forgive me, madame, I meant no offense," said the newcomer, bending his bust and head forward exaggeratedly in a parody of a deferential bow.

Annie imperceptibly narrowed her eyes, but wisely decided not to reply to the Vice Commander of Marley's Special Warrior Squad. Taking the reins of the conversation was Reiner who, after clearing his throat with a flick of a cough, addressed the newcomer, "What happened, Vice? It must be something serious. Have we been caught?"

"Absolutely not. Why should there be anything serious simmering?"

"Well, you summoned us with the soldiers of the Survey Corps around..."

"Ah, them!" The Vice-Commander leaned his back against the tree, assuming a relaxed pose, and made a listless gesture with his hand, as if chasing away an annoying fly buzzing around him. "As a matter of fact, that's what I wanted to talk about. Better, about her. Reiner, I was pleased to note that you engaged in what had all the air of an intimate conversation with our little curly-haired soldieress."

Reiner's shoulders stiffened imperceptibly, but he managed to maintain a neutral, relaxed expression. Had he seen them? Was he spying on him? Did he no longer trust him and his total adherence to the mission? "I was just trying to..."

"Don't worry, I wasn't reprimanding you for getting a little carried away with one of our enemies." The twinkle of a smile - white and ominously perfect - flashed in the darkness of the clearing. "'Partly because little Mizuki Onizuka, while indeed having many faults, is not one of them. Oh, no. She is not a demon from Paradis Island at all."

"What?!" exclaimed Bethold, wide-eyed. "So...?"

The pieces that until then had been swirling around in Reiner's head, insignificant and evocative only of a careless yet exciting conversation with a girl - no, a demon - a year older than him, began to line up one after the other, neatly, fitting together in such a way as to acquire, at last, a completed sense.

… Actually, at the moment I haven't seen my father for a while either. But ... but I hope I can meet him again someday.

"She's also from the outside world. Just like the four of us. And there's more." The Vice Commander paused for a long moment, pretending to appraise with studied carelessness the perfect shape of his own fingernails and actually enjoying the expression of anxiety and curiosity that surfaced on the faces of his subordinates as they slowly fully grasped the meaning of that revelation.

"What more could there be?" growled Annie, who detested such psychopathic mind games.

"Well, how should I put it? She's a ninja. Just like me."

Reiner squinted his eyes. Now it all made sense.

Well, the reason I became a... that hesitation, at the end of a seemingly trivial sentence.

"Were they soldiers?", "Yes, more or less...". That absurd answer.

"She's an old acquaintance of mine, by the way," the Vice Commander continued, his voice steeped in mockery, without it being clear against whom he was directing his contempt, whether them or little Mizuki Onizuka. "A real pain in the ass. I started following her this morning when she left Trost. Who would have expected that she was going to lead me right here to you, to this place forgotten by the world?"

"What should we do?" asked Berthold, in a panic. "How did she get here? Has she discovered us? Should we kill her?"

"Calm down, Berthold." The Vice Commander's comment resonated like a delighted sneer and, at the same time, like a peremptory order. "She doesn't know anything about us. If I'm honest, I have no idea why she has come this far. But never mind, I've already taken care of the problem of her memory, and now I'll take care of the rest."

"Why did you inform us, then, if you don't need our help?" inquired Annie, maintaining her usual frosty, compassionate tone that, however, did not fool her interlocutor; beneath that veneer of stoic indifference and detachment, there stirred anxiety and fear, and a desire to sweep away any obstacle that might one day prevent their return home.

"Annie, Annie, how rigid you are. Would it not be enough, as a reason for summoning you, that I wished to see my dear subordinates again after so long?" Pure and deadly poison gushed from every syllable uttered by the Vice Commander, rustling silk promising sweet caress and a knife hidden in the folds of the sheets. "Above all, I wanted to make sure our Reiner didn't lose his head too much for his new friend before it was too late."

"I just talked to her," felt compelled to point out Reiner, who sensed Annie's accusing and irate gaze fixed on his own shoulders; he could not imagine whether what irritated her so much was the demonstration of his weakness toward the island's demons - yet another - or the fact that because of his reckless behavior they had been forced to meet with their superior.

The Vice-Commander moved his hand in a bored manner, again as if he were chasing away an annoying insect. "Don't worry, as I've already told you, I'm not here to scold you. Mizuki tends to have that effect, on people; you're not the first person who happened to get lost in her golden eyes."

"You said before it was too late," Berthold inserted himself, his eyes lingering on every detail except his interlocutor's face. "You mean..."

"Well, yes. The fact that she knows nothing about us and the outside world does not mean that her presence here poses no danger to the mission. She's quite a nuisance, that one. I have already tried to deal with her discreetly, almost a year ago, and I failed. But I won't fail a second time: I have a plan, and, banishing modesty, I'm sure it's really perfect, to get someone like her out of the way. All I need is the right opportunity to implement it."

The backs of the three warriors were run through by a shiver, and not of cold.

They were well acquainted with the Vice Commander's personality.

His ruthlessness. His cruelty.

At that moment, the man who terrified them and was their only point of reference on the demon-inhabited island - a bitter and ironic twist of fate that they should rely on an individual as devoid of moral scruples and all humanity as he was - advanced a step, stepping out of the dimness of the woods and plunging into a pool of moonlight. Struck by the moon's hypnotic rays, the smile - no, the grotesque grin - that contorted the Vice Commander's features twinkled.

"I don't know when it will come, but it doesn't matter. It will happen, sooner or later. I know how to wait. I'm a patient person. Very patient."

Yes, he was. They knew: Annie, Berthold and Reiner knew that he was.

Like a snake on the prowl, he would wait, alert and watchful, for the auspicious opportunity to arise and then, with a quick, precise snap, he would wrap his coils around the unsuspecting victim's limbs.

He would devour her, piece by piece.

Until not a single bone would be left of her.

.

OOO

.

November 849

.

The last scouting of the year had almost come to an end without any particularly serious or significant incidents occurring in its course. It was not long before dawn and, within a little over an hour, the formation would resume its march to return to the Walls.

You said it right. Almost coming to an end, her mind reminded her with a voice intonation ridiculously similar to the captain's, so make sure you stay focused. No bullshit.

Mizuki's lips curved into a smile, then she shook her head slightly.

She thought back to the night before departure, spent on the rooftop in the company of a grumpy man, and the now customary reassurances or impositions they exchanged: no bullshit; I'll survive.

No bullshit. The captain had repeated this to her so many times now that she could replicate every shade of his tone of voice, in uttering that handful of syllables, every pause, every inflection. Sometimes she repeated them within herself consciously and more than she thought her dignity would ever tolerate - but she had discovered all too soon, to her dismay, that it was quite easy to make unbalanced compromises between the need to think of him and her own dignity; sometimes the rough words with which he was wont to express his concern suddenly resonated within her, blossoming like a flower in spring and filling her with a sweet warmth.

After the disastrous episode in the understairs closet - disastrous, she told herself, although a part of her thought back to that event electrified, lulled by the vague hope that such an occasion would arise again soon - she and the captain had gone back to acting as if nothing had ever happened between them. Neither Stohess nor that moment that had lasted an eternity in which they had been seriously on the verge of jumping on each other. They continued to be accomplices, only a little more guarded, for they had learned at their own expense that they had to protect themselves not only from the prying attention of fellow soldiers, but also and above all from themselves, from the dormant desires that sometimes got the upper hand, leading them to the threshold of exciting stupidity.

The captain punished her and they spent long evenings together, both pretending to bear each other's proximity grudgingly; they practiced, in full view of each other, clinging with desperate force to each other, overpowering and scratching each other, enjoying those brief, violent contacts that made up for the much gentler ones, imbued with another kind of violence, that they wished they had; they met each night before expeditions, sitting a little farther apart and careful not to brush against each other even by accident, yet so aware of the other's presence, by their side, that they had no more room, in their souls, to absorb the beauty of the bright, starry sky for which, at least formally, they went to the roof.

"I'm done," she announced to young Fiona Mills, who sat on a stone beside her, her bare arm outstretched stiffly toward Mizuki. The young girl - because this was what she was, a recruit not even fifteen years old who had joined the Survey Corps during August of that year, and was now grappling with her first scouting - ventured to open her eyes kept tightly shut until then and cast a glance at the skin on her forearm. "For now, I've smeared the burn with an ointment that's supposed to help with the pain and promote healing; it's not very strong, but it's the only ointment I have with me right now... I didn't think I'd need burn medicine out here."

Fiona's friend, Camilla Bennet, shook her head laughing. "Only Fiona could get hurt during an expedition without giants being involved!"

The face of the person directly concerned turned purple. She was so ashamed of the mistake she had made that, immediately after the incident, she had rushed out of the fortress that served as the first outpost for the reconquering operation and where the soldiers normally spent the night in expeditions lasting longer than a day, and hid near the room where they had locked up the horses. Seeking and warning Mizuki of the injury had been the faithful Camilla, who had led her to the place where her friend was hiding, in tears of pain and shame.

Mizuki ruffled Fiona's stubbled hair with the hand not soaked in pomade. "You have to be careful when you refuel, Fiona. The gas we use to run the device has quite a high temperature."

"Yes, I was just a little nervous... it's my first time outside the Walls, and even though I know the giants aren't awake at night, I can't stop myself from wincing at every strange noise."

Facing the girl's face, contracted into a grimace of disappointment at herself, Mizuki barely restrained herself from reassuring her, lovingly reminding her that by now half the expedition was gone and that everything, the next day, would go well. If because of her optimistic attitude those two recruits had let their guard down and ended up crushed under the foot of a giant, the captain would have beheaded her and then used her head as a duster. At that thought, Mizuki smiled again. "It is right to always keep your guard up, Fiona. Don't be ashamed. Fear keeps us alive. But we still need to keep it at bay enough to pay attention to everything around us, not just giants." She tergiversed, then - considering that she had fulfilled her duties of intransigence toward the young recruits in an exemplary manner, so that not even the captain could have complained, except to apostrophize her as an incoherent who hailed as the best of life-savers an instinct of which she was utterly devoid - added: "And anyway, by now the most is done. You don't have to worry too much, girls. You'll see, everything will work out for the best."

Fiona's face relaxed and regained some color and serenity, but before she could thank her, Camilla anticipated her, "Yeah, yeah, right: you were worried about the giants. I bet Captain Levi had passed by and you got all googly-eyed."

The progress made by Fiona's complexion plummeted ruefully, and she went back to looking like an overripe tomato.

"Come on, Fio, if you don't ask her, I will." Camilla took a big breath and, with her hands entwined behind her back and her body rocking back and forth, taking on the air of a schoolgirl aware of the shamelessness of her own request, turned her chocolate-colored gaze toward Mizuki. "You are on good terms with Captain Levi, miss, are you not?"

"I... don't call me miss, please. You make me feel old."

"You're often together with him, aren't you, miss?" continued Camilla, as if Mizuki had not opened her mouth. "So we were wondering... I mean, Fiona was wondering: do you happen to know if the captain has a girlfriend?"

Mizuki's shoulders stiffened imperceptibly.

Two gray eyes that, in the sultry darkness of a too-small room, traced the features of her body.

Warm breath tickling her ear.

Raven hair brushed against her neck.

Firmly touching fingers on her lips, which she had imagined, over the course of turbulent nights, had grazed her in places on her body that she had never shown to anyone.

He doesn't have one, but he sure as hell wouldn't hit on a recruit who couldn't even refuel without injury.

She was horrified, more out of habit than anything else, at the answer she would want to dish out to Camilla. By now she seemed to have accepted that the existence in her heart of certain feelings defined by common sense in positive terms evoked, necessarily, other much less pleasant ones; especially since she had noticed - with the same amazement as an infant opening his eyes to the world for the first time - the huge number of individuals belonging to the female sex who swarmed in the Survey Corps, most of whom gravitated around, alternately, Erwin or the captain.

"I wouldn't know, he's very private about his personal affairs," she forced herself to say instead, swallowing that obnoxious part of herself whose existence she had been unaware of until recently.

"Hear that, Fiona?! Doubt is better than tremendous certainty!"

Mizuki stood up and, observing Camilla encouragingly clapping her hand on the back of an embarrassed Fiona, wondered if, a year ago, she and Petra offered a similar spectacle, while, innocent and enthusiastic, they hatched plans to bring down a man the one loved and the other found hilarious to torment, until...

Until one betrayed the other.

"Fiona, Camilla, it's cold. We'd better get back..."

"Mizuki!"

Running close to the fortress wall, Mizuki spotted Hanje rushing in their direction.

"Good thing I found you! Something terrible has happened!"

Mizuki immediately became alert and ready to take in whatever orders or information the team leader wanted to pass on to her; but nothing, not even her ninja nerves tempered by her father's rigorous training and missions, would ever have prepared her sufficiently for that announcement.

"It's about Levi!"

Beside her, a muffled groan from the two recruits. Below her, the ground shaking as if a giant class fifteen was scampering a few feet away. Her suddenly soft legs could not support her, forcing her to rest one hand on the stone wall, and a chasm opened in the exact center of her chest.

How was it possible? How was it possible that something terrible had just happened to Levi, humanity's strongest soldier?

A sequence of vivid sensations took hold of her body: the secure support of the ground beneath her feet failing, the sense of dizziness taking over, emptiness, nothingness.

Levi. Danger.

"What happened?" she asked, in a voice she struggled to identify with her own.

"I have no definite information! All I know is that he's in trouble!" Hanje stood panting beside the group of three girls, and launched into an explanation by holding her belly with one arm and waving her free hand in the air. "He and his team penetrated the woods to check one of Mike's olfactory hunches, but only Oluo and Gunther returned, in shock... I didn't quite understand what happened, but Levi, Petra and Eld did not return."

Hanje was acting strangely. Although her mind was totally subjugated by the combination of feelings evoked by the words Levi and danger, which she never thought she would put side by side, Mizuki maintained enough lucidity to notice that detail. Her squad leader was always agitated: about some newly formulated theory about giants, about a discovery, about a research project approved by the army higher-ups, about the prospect of some night out with fellow soldiers; and that natural and physiological disposition to excitement reverberated in her every gesture: her movements were snappy, at times desperate, and unpredictable, as if her slender, slouching body was always engaged in a no-holds-barred struggle, strained in an effort to express, through every limb, the eagerness that animated its owner.

Instead, the Hanje who spoke to her, panting, appeared agitated, yes, but in an almost artificial way. She fidgeted as if... as if she were trying to behave that way; as if she were trying to imitate the usual, unstoppable Hanje.

But Levi was in danger.

Confronted with that, what did it matter if her way of being agitated seemed different from the usual?

"I've been looking for Erwin, but I can't find him. We can't wait any longer, though; every second is precious. While I assemble a team, I want you to go forward to render assistance; someone may be injured."

"Roger that."

"Mizuki." Hanje's voice called her back as she was already hurrying toward the door of the makeshift stable. "Take the two girls with you."

She froze. Another oddity, another piece that did not fit, another Hanje she did not recognize. "They are recruits..."

"I know, but you might need help."

Two recruits to the rescue of humanity's strongest soldier, being asked to face the unknown when even he could not.

It sounded like one of those dirty, racist and anything but funny jokes told in taverns.

Something was strange, something didn't feel right.

But the captain was in danger.

"Fiona, with me," Mizuki then said, making her decision - though in fact a real choice, that one, could not be considered - while at the same time banishing all unnecessary doubt from her mind. "Camilla, you didn't fill up with gas, right?"

The girl jerked.

"Well?" repeated Mizuki, trying to impart sufficient gentleness to her tone of voice so as to disguise her urgency and annoyance at her slowness in answering such a trivial question.

"N... no."

During that exchange of banter, the group had moved inside the former warehouse where the horses rested motionless, saddled to be ready for quick use in case of emergency. In grabbing Ronnie's reins, Mizuki raised an eyebrow at Hanje's turn, as if to ask her if Camilla's response constituted sufficient justification to exempt her from participating in the rescue operation.

The team leader allowed a long moment of silence to elapse; because of the darkness, it was difficult, if not impossible, to guess her expression, but for a moment Mizuki was convinced to read barely restrained annoyance in the woman's eyes. "Right," Hanje finally said, adjusting her glasses on the tip of her nose. "Camilla, stay with me."

Mizuki moved like an automaton, with precise, mechanical gestures; inside, however, she felt a tornando of emotions over which, among all of them, stood out fear.

An ancestral, blind fear, impossible to keep at bay, fueled by two words, devastating in their simplicity, that rumbled through her mind like an echo in a valley.

Levi. Danger.

Everything else was reduced to useless details of secondary importance, like a drop of water compared to the ocean.

She only wished that her fingers would move faster, in checking that the buckles of the saddle and the device were closed properly; she only wished to rush into the woods, to eat the minutes and the distance that separated her from the captain to rush to his aid.

Wait for me, wait for me, wait for me. Not yet, don't die, it can't happen... You have to wait for me, I'm coming, you can't leave me here. I'm the one putting myself in danger and risking my neck, not you. You must...

Mizuki lowered her head, and clutched the reins so tightly that she dug the leather laces into the tender flesh of her palm.

You must come back to me.

The next preparations took place in silence, interrupted only by Hanje's instructions. "You have to head southeast from here," she concluded, pointing with her finger at the darkness that surrounded the fortress like a cloak, and tracing an invisible road that would lead them to an unknown destination.

Mizuki, riding with Ronnie, nodded and exchanged one last glance with Hanje; behind her, Camilla clung with an awkward, trembling hug to Fiona's leg, also on horseback, ready to depart at the order of what, even if informally, she regarded as her superior. "We're waiting for reinforcements," murmured Mizuki, tightening her grip on the reins. "We'll bring him... them back."

Then, more decisively, "Let's go, Fiona!"

Hanje and Camilla Bennet, on the threshold of the makeshift stable, watched the two figurines gallop off, plunge and finally disappear into the darkness, moving away from the last shred of civilization that still held out in the giants' territory.

After about two minutes of silence and stillness, Camilla Bennet - somewhat puzzled by the calmness of the superior at her side - decided to retreat; she felt no need to ask for an explanation, nor to inform the woman of her own retreat.

With much intellectual honesty, she candidly admitted that she could not be considered nor could she regard herself as a particularly smart person. Therefore, she became convinced that she was missing, of the whole unpleasant affair, some fundamental detail that, if known or guessed, would make it obvious and trivial why Captain Hanje Zoe, after pressing Mizuki and Fiona so urgently, had not yet rushed to organize the troops; not to mention that the aforementioned Captain Zoe put her in awe, if not quite a kind of reverential fear, and if she could avoid drawing attention to herself, she would do so.

So, partly out of humility and partly out of self-interest, Camilla decided that the best option among those available to her was to quietly deflect.

Hanje, on the other hand - the strange and artificially agitated Hanje Zoe - stayed on the threshold of the barn, her gaze hidden by the glasses fixed on the clearing that stretched into the woods. She immediately became aware of the recruit's attempt to disappear unnoticed, and considered for a few moments the possibility of stopping her before the little fool did something stupid; the presence of some soldiers standing guard outside the fortress, however, kept her from carrying out her intention. She shook her head, and forced herself to remain calm: there was no point in risking getting caught for a small fish, when by now her real prey had thrown herself so eagerly, without hesitation, into the trap so carefully prepared for it.

And if only Camilla Bennet had been a little braver and paused a moment longer, she would have noticed the wry smile that, like a flash of white light, blazed for an instant on Captain Hanje Zoe's lips.

A grin that was cold, cruel, and in truth completely out of character for the genial, giant-loving team leader of the Survey Corps.

The smile of a snake that has just begun to wrap its coils around its unsuspecting victim.

Everything else was reduced to useless details of secondary importance, like a drop of water compared to the ocean.

.

"Oluo, I mean! Stop fixing that handkerchief around your neck! Who do you think you are!"

"Oh, I bet I know, who he thinks he is... He's obviously imitating Theo when Mizuki puts the bib on him for dinner."

"Good one, Loki."

"Thank you, Gunther."

"Petra, you are beginning to annoy me. Has anyone ever told you that pedantic women are not attractive at all?"

"Oluo, it's rude to address a girl this way..."

"Tsk. No one asked your opinion, male version of Hanje."

When recruit Camilla Bennett, on her way back to her squad's post after refueling with gas, noticed the handful of soldiers - composed of Loki Shindo, Gunther Schultz, Amado Kizuki, Petra Ral and Oluo Bozado - bickering with an air of consummate habit, her first thought was that there had been a mistake in the reconstruction provided by Captain Zoe, or that she, notoriously not very bright and endowed with poor concentration, had misunderstood the identities of the soldiers who were in distress.

In front of her, Petra Ral - the attractive and talented member of the Special Operations Squad under the direct orders of Captain Levi - had just delivered a seemingly quite painful slap to her comrade Oluo Bozado.

Moreover, it seemed to her very strange and certainly in very poor taste that Gunther Schultz was scrambling around the fire when the captain and vice-captain of their team were still missing from roll call.

"Hey!" exclaimed Oluo, as he rubbed his aching head with one hand. "What are you looking at, rookie?!" he asked, addressing Camilla who, standing motionless, was studying the group with a furrowed brow, as if she were trying to come to the end of an unsolvable riddle.

"Oluo, I mean! Stop terrorizing kids! Do you think that makes you cool?"

"Now you've really annoyed me, Petra."

But the greater surprise and relief, for Camilla Bennet, was yet to come.

"Tsk. Ral, Bozado, what's all the fuss about?"

Levi scrutinized his subordinates with a frown that left no doubt as to the rather consistent extent of his discontent; behind him, Hanje, Erwin, Moblit, Eld and Lavinia could be seen, returning, exhausted, from the reorganization meeting with the other captains.

It was then that some cog in Camilla Bennett's highly valuable brain jammed, causing a deafening and most annoying noise that for a moment prevented the girl from thinking clearly.

"Captain, I..."

"It was her, who..."

The jam fixed itself with a snap, and Camilla Bennet, her hands clasped to her chest in joy, approached the group of superiors. "Captain Levi! So you're alive!"

The subject whose persistent membership in the world of the living had been so joyfully ascertained wrinkled his brow. It was not the first time that some imaginative recruit had attempted an over-the-top approach, which he usually greeted with a contemptuous and outraged silence, but such an inappropriate comment seemed really too much for him to bear in that way. "Yes, I'm alive. Any problems with that?"

"Thank goodness! I was so worried, really! And Vice-Captain Jin is with you too, what a relief!" Camilla Bennet shifted her attention from Levi - increasingly annoyed by the turn of the conversation - to Hanje, and her voice became uncertain and veined with fear. "Team leader! So have the others returned with them, too? Or has someone been sent into the woods to inform them to come back?"

Hanje assumed the astonished expression that only her experiments on giants could arouse. "What are you talking about?"

Camilla Bennett's lips twitched into a grimace. All right, maybe she couldn't be considered to be a genius, but for her to be treated like a fool like that really crossed the bounds of decency. "How, what am I talking about? But if it was you who sent soldiers Onizuka and Fiona Mills to rescue Captain Levi!"

"What? When?!"

"Not even half an hour ago!"

Erwin's gaze darkened. "Hanje, if I find out this has anything to do with your obsession with capturing a giant..."

"Erwin, I swear I don't know anything about it!"

"But it's not true! I saw it! I was there!"

"She's clearly lying. That brat to the captain's rescue? No kidding!"

"Shut up, Oluo! No one asked your opinion!"

"Who the heck is this Fiona Mills anyway?"

"Loki, do you always strive to ask such stupid questions or do they come naturally to you?"

"Shut up, male version of Hanje."

In the midst of that ruckus, a metallic sound rose distinctly above the excited clamoring of the soldiers crowded around the fire; and all eyes darted to Lavinia who, looking very pale, had dropped to the ground the copper bowl used by soldiers for drinking during scouting. "Excuse me, um," she whispered then, with obvious difficulty.

"Recruit Camilla Bennett."

"Camilla. Wouldn't it be possible for you to give us a full report of what happened?"

The girl - just to show that, no matter how little smart she was, she was not going to let herself be pointed out as a liar without a fight - did not let herself be begged and, strutting and offended, told the group who listened attentively and increasingly astonished her account of what had happened at the barn; Hanje's attempt at denial was interrupted by an admonishing glance from Erwin, who from Lavinia's strange demeanor sensed something was going on.

When Camilla had finished her account, Lavinia - if possible even paler than before - merely sketched a smile, albeit with obvious difficulty. "Now everything is clear. Excuse us if we didn't immediately understand what you were referring to. That's right, the emergency is over, and Soldiers Onizuka and Mills will return as soon as possible. Thank you very much, Camilla. You may go."

Camilla Bennett, satisfied that she had proven herself not to be a liar and totally disinterested in the inconsistencies of the story that held water on all sides, brought her closed fisted hand to the center of her chest and turned on her heels to leave.

As soon as the recruit had moved far enough away, Hanje burst into an excited protest. "I don't know what the heck that one was talking about! I've been with you until now, Erwin, you can't think that..."

"It wasn't Hanje," Lavinia asserted lapidarily, serious and grave; then she squinted her eyelids for a moment, as if searching within herself for the strength to continue. "Loki, Amado; there is something you do not know. Commander Erwin and I suspect that there is another ninja inside the walls, and he is trying to kill Mizuki."

"WHAT?!" Loki leapt to his feet, his eyes wide and his expression somewhere between furious and shocked. "What the fuck are you talking about, Lavinia?!"

"It wasn't Hanje... a ninja..." Amado stood up in turn. "A Disguise Technique!"

"Yes. Also, I'm afraid it's someone who knows her well ... who has observed her enough to know how to get her into trouble."

Amado gasped. "You're right ... he insisted that she bring the recruit with her. If there should... should be a problem, any kind of problem, on her own she might have been able to handle it; but with an inexperienced young girl in tow..."

"... she will give priority to protecting her, and she won't even be able to use techniques if she doesn't want to blow her cover." At that point Lavinia lifted her eyelids and stared at the two coals glowing in her pale, terrified face at a rather pissed-off Loki. "We must go and get her back. Recriminations later."

In response, the boy emitted a grunt that could be interpreted as a threat, an assent, or both.

"But how do we do that? That's all we know about the direction they went: that they went southeast," bellowed Amado, panicked.

"Loki, do you have them with you?" asked Lavinia.

The boy nodded, as if he did not trust his own self-control enough to answer her verbally; then he turned to Amado: "Run and get one of Mizuki's dresses from her backpack; and be careful handling it using something else that belongs to her, we cannot allow her scent to be contaminated."

"We'll wait for you at the stables!" shouted Lavinia after him, as Amado had already sprinted away.

Erwin and the other soldiers were left to observe the exchange in silence - the former, engaged in a tumultuous and very rapid analysis of recent developments; the latter, on the other hand, incredulous at Lavinia's revelation, and lost in the most varied fantasies about what the heck it was and how a " disguise technique " worked.

"Lavinia," the commander called back to her, noticing that the girl was walking briskly toward the fortress exit, followed by Loki. "You will not be the one going."

She turned around like a fury, her eyes sending flashes of lightning. "No way!"

"That's for me to say," replied the man coolly. "We don't know whether this ploy aims to strike only Mizuki or draw the three of you out into the open. If you throw yourselves in hot pursuit of her, you may be playing into the hands of our enemy."

"No..." she began, in an unmistakable cornered-animal defiance.

"I will personally lead the team to bring her back." Now in Erwin's voice rang a dangerously alluring note of sweetness.

"You are too weak. If you come with us, you will only end up complicating things. Especially if you get caught up in emotions like you are right now." Levi, who had remained silent until then, uttered that cutting comment in his usual calm and indifferent tone, but his words fell like boulders on the two. Erwin understood with a jolt that his captain was implicitly communicating to him, in no uncertain terms or possibility of reply, that he would take part in the rescue mission; Lavinia - at first indignant at the calmness shown by the stupid man who should have been prey to a hysterical attack worse than hers - crossed Levi's steely gaze, and what she saw there was enough to convince her to listen.

A single imperative, in the impending storm stirring in those eyes, categorical and absolute.

He would take her back to the fortress alive, whatever the price to be paid.

"Let's go to the barn," Hanje proposed, to dampen the explosive atmosphere in the air.

By the time Amado reached them, Erwin, Levi, Oluo and Petra were already riding their respective steeds, while Loki, crouching beside them, had placed on the ground in front of them an egg-sized green ball covered with incomprehensible signs and writing.

"So, now you..." Hanje paused, unsure how to continue.

"Through a Summoning Technique I will summon something that will help you in your search for Mizuki," Loki completed for her, staring with a furrowed brow at the object as if he had every intention of burning it rather than using it as a conduit to summon a helper to that place.

"How cool is that! And how many more of those balls do you have?"

"Besides this one, only two. As I have already told you, after I summon it I will only be able to keep it in this dimension for about ten minutes, a quarter of an hour at most. See that you make good use of it."

Cautiously, Amado unfolded Mizuki's uniform jacket and slid one of the girl's T-shirts to the floor beside Loki. His comrade nodded contentedly, squinted his eyelids, and began to make such a rapid movement with his hands that the soldiers could barely make out the shape of his fingers in that blurry heap of flailing flesh. Then, with one last decisive gesture, he extended his arm and stretched his open hand almost to the point where his palm brushed against the little green ball...

A puff of smoke.

A yelp.

And instead of the green ball a small bulldog had appeared, covered in thick hazel-colored fur punctuated with white spots.

"'For all the abnormals!" exclaimed Hanje, squinting.

"Smell it," Loki ordered the little dog, pointing to the abandoned T-shirt on the ground, and, after the animal had obeyed, continued in a whisper that, rather than an order, sounded like a plea: "Find her..."

The animal jerkily raised its head, sniffed the air for a few moments and then, again, the ground in front of the barn door, and took off running in a southeasterly direction. Erwin raised an arm in the night, and the four soldiers galloped off in pursuit of him.

"Ten minutes!" shouted Loki to the dark silhouettes that gradually blurred into the darkness of the night. Then, leaning against the stone wall, he murmured softly, as if they could still hear him and accept his prayer, "Bring her back to us…"

.

They advanced into the clearing, hot on the heels of the little dog, which ran light and fast without looking back, spurring the horses and then, having reached the woods, whirling through the air via the three-dimensional maneuvering device. After about sixteen minutes, as per Loki's warning, the animal disappeared with a puff of smoke, and all that was left for them to do was to proceed, attempting to maintain the course inaugurated by their guide, in the hope that the brat had not changed course after that point.

After about half an hour, Erwin ordered the group to stop with a wave of his hand: Levi glided onto the branch next to the commander, Petra and Oluo a couple of trees away behind them, guarding against any assaults from the rear.

"Damn it," growled Levi in a colorless tone, the only clue testifying to his deep anger and urgency to act being the hand gesture that mimicked the action of snapping a knife blade. "Where the heck did she go?"

"..."

"Erwin, why the fuck did you make us stop? If we don't move, she's going to get further away..."

"We're going back," Erwin announced, in a quiet, subdued tone of voice so that only Levi could hear him.

"What?" hissed the captain, turning back to the commander.

"You heard right. We can't go any further."

"..."

"Don't look at me like that, Levi. The gas in the mounted cylinders is almost gone, and we have to keep the spare to make it back to the fortress. Besides, it's a short time before dawn, and as soon as the sun comes up, the formation has to get back on the road."

"So why..."

But Levi interrupted himself. Erwin stared at an unspecified point in the darkness that opened, unfathomable, before them.

He had not decided to authorize and participate in that desperate pursuit to retrieve the brat; at least, the captain understood in a flash, that had never been the main purpose of the operation.

No.

Erwin Smith was aiming to flush out the mysterious enemies, endowed with unknown abilities, who were lurking within the walls.

Erwin Smith.

The man who had abdicated his humanity to lead the Survey Corps; the man who always took the right choice for the common good; the wisest; the most prescient, even if it turned out to be the least merciful option for his subordinates.

"Let's go back, Levi," Erwin repeated, and this time two pools of clear water caressed the surrounding landscape, bubbling up to settle on the captain. "Mizuki is smart. We must have faith in her, and in the fact that she will be able to get back in time on her own."

Get back in time.

Before the formation left. Before they abandoned her there, with a recruit, without gas or food, in the middle of giant territory.

Erwin Smith continued to stare at him, casting a silent provocation.

We're going back.

It was not a request, but an order.

And Erwin was testing him, daring him to disobey it.

Levi squinted his eyelids, as if that would serve to erase the image of her smile and her ever-moving body transformed into nothing more than a helpless, shattered object exposed to the elements.

He was Levi Ackerman. The captain of the Survey Corps. Humanity's strongest soldier. His heart did not belong to him since he had made the decision to put it in the service of humanity.

Following these ideals in the past, he had obeyed without a word the orders of the man who now peered at him expectantly; he had done so at the cost of suffering, at the cost of sacrificing his comrades, who had died by the hundreds before his eyes, mauled or crushed by giants.

She would be only the last name on that long list.

Yes, just one name, and one more hole in his heart.

"I understand, Erwin. I trust your judgment."

The commander stood motionless, a flash of satisfaction barely hinted at in the two lakes that stirred placidly on his face; he barely nodded, then turned his back and launched himself into the void, down the path they had just traveled. Darting alongside Petra and Oluo, Erwin gave them the same directive. "Let's go back!"

Levi shot one last glance toward the unknown, toward where she was, and where she might die; where she might already be dead. You have to fend for yourself this time, brat, he thought bitterly. No bullshit. Just survive. And...

Just a name at the bottom of a long list of deaths.

With a snap of his tongue, the captain operated the device to comply with the order of his commander, the man he had sworn to follow because he was intimately and firmly convinced of his ability to see something that everyone else missed.

Just a name, yes.

But how do you forget the name of someone who has penetrated your soul, sticking deep like the roots of a hundred-year-old tree in the ground?

Levi did not know. And he did not intend to find out.

Come back to me.

.

"Lavinia, I mean, will you calm down?! Can you please tell me what are you doing?! Answer me!"

Amado's pleas and entreaties, however, were to no avail, falling on deaf ears exactly like all previous reprimands: Lavinia continued undaunted to fasten the buckles on the equipment, or to attempt to do so, since her hands were shaking so badly that once in two times she could not get the hooks or laces into place, and had to repeat the operation, desperate and increasingly overwrought.

"You even refueled ... are you crazy? Didn't you hear what the commander said?!" continued Amado, exasperated. "Lavinia!"

"Lavinia." That faint whisper rose from Loki, who sat on the ground against the outside wall of the barn, resting with his eyes closed and one hand placed on his belly. He had maintained the Summoning Technique for far longer than he was used to, and now he was paying the consequences. "If you put yourself in danger, when that fool comes back she's going to kill me and Amado."

When that fool comes back. Loki could not formulate the sentence in any other way than that. He did not even want to consider the possibility that the absurd situation might end in a way that did not involve her return.

The comment seemed to suddenly call Lavinia back to reality. She turned furiously toward the boy and took a step in his direction, jerking Amado out of her path with a shove. "You are an idiot, Loki! Can't you see that's the whole point! If we don't do anything, she won't come back!"

"But they went to get her back! The commander..." gasped Amado, who had never seen her in that state.

"I shouldn't have trusted him! I was a fool!" Lavinia, as if in hysterics, with the laces of the device still half untied, bolted toward the horse that waited placidly grazing the grass.

Before she could hoist herself into the saddle, however, Amado grabbed her by the shoulders and held her back. "Lav, calm down! You are delirious!"

"I am not delirious! That man doesn't care about Mizuki!" she shouted, struggling with all her might. "He's probably ordered a retreat by now! Even without her!"

"But how can you say that!?"

Because if I were in his place, I would have done the same thing, she thought bitterly, as hot, salty tears streamed down her face, and with half-closed eyes she scanned the night sky, which, inexorably, was being brightened by a tenuous light that heralded dawn

For she and Erwin Smith were the same.

Cold, calculating, ruthless, always aware of what was happening around them and ready for anything.

"Hey... they're really coming back."

Loki's indistinct muttering stopped the fight between Lavinia and Amado; the boy, when he was sure that, at least for the moment, that mad fury had subsided, released her, and all three waited with beating hearts, some in anguish and some in hope, for the arrival of the rapidly approaching indistinct figures.

As soon as the handful were within earshot, Loki found the strength to shout, despite his weakness, "Have you found her?!"

None of the knights responded to that howling call in the night, and Lavinia felt her heart turn to stone. Shaking off Amado's hand, still resting on her back, she turned her back on the approaching group and went back to fiddling with the buckles of the device.

The sound of hooves on the ground became more intense, and then suddenly stopped.

"Well?!"

"Sorry, guys..." Petra's voice, filled with regret and concern. "We didn't find her."

Had she had the time, Lavinia would have jumped at her neck. If you were really sorry you could have stayed out there looking for her, bitch.

"Don't worry, though: Captain Levi is taking care of it."

Lavinia's body was shot through with a gasp, and she jerked her head up, finding herself staring wide-eyed at her horse's mane.

Amado leaned over to come into her field of vision, raising his eyebrows in a gesture clearly expressive of an unmistakable and highly irritating "I told you so."

She, however, ignored him.

It was not possible.

It was simply not possible that Erwin Smith had ordered his most valiant captain to continue the search.

It was the wrong choice, because it exposed him to the risk - which looked more and more like a certainty every minute - of losing, in a single blow, two soldiers, one of whom was regarded as humanity's most powerful weapon against the giants.

The voices around her grew muffled as those present moved away from the barn to the entrance of the fortress to bring news also to Hanje and Moblit, who had been assigned to stand in for the commander in his absence.

Erwin Smith could not have made such a choice.

But then...

A flash of awareness.

When Lavinia turned around, she found Erwin Smith standing behind her and peering at her. She looked at the face she now knew like her own pocket from the endless hours spent working on opposite sides of the same desk, tired, tense, and shot through with a not even too hidden vein of annoyance. "What you thought," he told her, dryly. "I would beg you to keep it to yourself, Lavinia. If it became known, I would have to punish him, and honestly I have other things to think about now. Did I make myself clear?"

The girl, her heart pounding, nodded her head in assent.

"You were right in the end."

The commander dropped that comment that attested to his defeat carelessly, just before walking back to the fortress with a firm stride, as if nothing had happened.

.

Come back to me.

Branches darted around her, her breath getting shorter and shorter, her strength waning, Fiona's dead weight on her back.

Yet she did not even consider slowing down.

Levi. Danger. Haste.

She had sense only to keep moving forward, only to hurry, only if she found him before it was too late.

There could not exist a world where she would not arrive in time.

There could not exist a world where she would continue to live, and he would not.

There could not exist a world without him.

Come back to me, please.

.

Come back to me.

Straight on, always straight on. He kept moving forward, because he had no other choice.

Orders, qualifications, duties, Erwin.

Nothing made sense, and nothing would ever make sense again, without her.

A name at the bottom of a death list. An indelible name, in his heart.

There could not exist a world where he would not arrive in time.

There could not exist a world where he would continue to live, and she would not.

There could not exist a world without her.

Come back to me, please.

.

Suddenly, the world regained texture for both of them.

From being a mere dull gray stage where their respective tragedies were played out, the surrounding reality resumed color, smell, movement.

A sense that justified the existence of the world.

She. Alive.

He. Alive.

"Captain!"

Levi lowered his head sharply, but in vain. He was moving too fast, and had passed the branch from which the call came. Clicking his tongue, he spun around and reversed his direction of travel.

The brat waved an arm from a branch a little further back.

He hooked the grappling hooks to the tree trunk and rewound the cables.

He landed on the branch.

As if in a dream, he felt a pair of slender arms wrap around his torso, entwining behind his back and locking him in a trembling embrace, and a head topped with a perfect sphere of hair rested on his shoulder.

His hand rose, as if endowed with a will of its own, until it rested gently on her waist and took to tracing the groove traced by her spine with his fingertips, his muscles relaxed, and he inhaled the familiar, unsettling scent emanating from the body clasped to his own.

Although it was the first time their bodies had really known each other, they fitted together perfectly, effortlessly, in an embrace as natural as the act of breathing, as if they had been molded to intertwine softly in that way.

"You're okay..."

A whisper.

She trembled, clinging to him.

To him who had come back.

"You're okay."

Another whisper, part question and part affirmation.

His body did not tremble, but his soul, in front of her, did.

To her who had come back.

Mizuki lifted her head, but did not turn away. "Of course!" she said then, deciding to interpret it as a question.

A reddish scratch furrowed her right cheek. Levi raised his hand, and with the fingertip of his thumb wiped away the trickle of blood gushing from the torn skin.

Now I'll kiss her.

Not a thought he formulated, nor a decision he made, but rather the awareness of an inevitable fate that arose from the contact of his fingers against her muscular back.

"Why were you behind me?!"

He wondered why she kept talking, and bore him with unimportant questions.

"What happened?"

Sure enough, they were in the giants' territory, probably being spied on by an unseen enemy who was prowling around with the aim of killing her like a pig.

Levi gasped, and clenched into a fist the hand that still rested on the brat's body.

Fuck.

"You got tricked."

That girl was really fucking with his brain.

How the heck had it happened that he had been on the verge of kissing her - of kissing her for real - in the middle of giant territory?

"Tricked?"

Although he had regained control of at least his brain, the rest of Levi's body openly rebelled at the prospect of letting her go free and abdicating his plans to kiss her. Fortunately for the captain, Mizuki's innate curiosity got the better of her shaking and fright: she suddenly broke away from him, as if she had just been burned, taking a step back, and the distance gained allowed Levi to finally regain a sense of reality.

"Petra and Oluo?"

"They're fine. We'll explain later. We don't have time now, we have to go back. Where is the recruit?"

Mizuki bit her lip, then hinted with her chin at a bundle abandoned on the branch a meter away from them that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be the body of a girl curled up.

"Were you attacked?"

"Attacked? And by whom? By the giants? Anyway, no, she's just asleep. It was me, with one of my concoctions, as you call them." Mizuki smiled weakly at Levi's wrinkling eyebrows. "I didn't know how far away you were, captain, and we'd been going on for quite a while... at that rate, we were going to run out of gas. So I drugged her, loaded her on my shoulders and ... well, I went on in our way."

He remembered it from Tiburtina, her way of moving.

"Did you really carry her all the way here?"

"Just the last bit of the way. Fortunately, Fiona is quite petite."

"You could have..."

"No," she blocked him, not allowing him to complete such a profane sentence. "I couldn't stop." Then, now too accustomed to justifying herself before the reprimand even started in an attempt to save what little was left of her ears, she added: "I know I shouldn't have done that, but..."

"No, for once you did the right thing by not following the rules." Levi, after tapping on the brat's cylinders, snuggled down next to Fiona to do the same. "With the cylinders on all three of us, and if you proceed in your way, we should be able to make it back to the horses without a problem."

Mizuki could not hold back a laugh. "Captain, you do realize that you just gave me license to kill, yes?"

"I said for once." Levi, shooting an annoyed look at the brat who was giving him the best of her sadistic sneers, lifted Fiona's inert body with one arm.

"Irrelevant detail."

At a nod from the captain, they set off for the fortress: he, using three-dimensional movement, she instead anchoring herself to the trunks and branches of the trees that darted under and around her with chakra, and leaping from one to the other like a monkey. After about five minutes, Levi ordered a break to proceed with the replacement of the gas cylinders. Mizuki landed next to him, who had already unceremoniously abandoned Fiona and was removing the empty cylinders with confident, swift gestures.

"You did well," Levi then said, without looking up from the device. "If it hadn't been for that inscription, I would never have found you."

"Inscription'? What inscription?"

"Have you gone nuts?" The captain pointed to a spot on his right. "That one, of course."

Mizuki followed the bored gesture made by Levi's white hand.

On the trunk of a tree not far away, struck by the incipient daylight filtering through the lush foliage of the forest, stood a giant arrow, in a brilliant red that resembled that of the canisters given to soldiers to leave messages for squads in the rear that could not be communicated by smoke signals, the tip pointing in the direction from which they had just come.

Levi grabbed the unconscious recruit back by the waist. "We can... what are you doing?"

With her peculiar pace, Mizuki had reached the marked tree, and now her hand hesitantly caressed the arrow that scarred its trunk; her slender fingers hesitantly traced its edges and lingered on the droplets of fresh paint slid downward, like the rivulets of blood that, moments before, he had wiped from her cheek.

Perhaps it was due to distance, darkness or urgency, but it seemed to Levi that her hand, in making that gesture, trembled imperceptibly.

"Oi. Would you like me to serve you a cup of tea while you contemplate your work?"

Mizuki jerked. For a moment, she stood motionless, her fingers suspended less than a millimeter from the wood. "Ah! No, thank you! If I have to self-celebrate for my stunt, I'd prefer a cup of coffee, no dirty water!" she exclaimed, collecting herself with a giggle and turning back to him.

Levi studied, in order, her face bathed in half-light, the inscription behind her back, and finally her hand abandoned against her side, hidden from his view by the scabbards of the swords, as if to prevent him from ascertaining whether it was really trembling or if he had only imagined that imperceptible shiver.

"Tsk. Let's get moving. My ass's freezing."

OOO

Absolute silence reigned in the commander's office.

After Erwin Smith's account of the discovery, dating back to November 848 and never confirmed, about the probable presence of other ninjas within the walls, apparently hostile to the group or Mizuki, and the subsequent decision not to mention it to anyone to avoid panic in the absence of evidence, the already tension-filled atmosphere hovering over the group became even heavier. Each of those present stared at the floor, at the ceiling, at their hands, at any object, as long as they did not meet the gaze of others. The only three people who, on the contrary, were carefully studying the reactions of the other soldiers were Levi, leaning against the wall next to the door with folded arms; Erwin Smith, sitting with his hands intertwined at his desk and...

"Lavinia, did you know?" Loki peered with an indecipherable expression at his teammate, sunk into the small sofa, pale as a sheet, and asked that question in an icy tone that did not normally belong to him. "That there was someone around who was trying to kill her?"

"Loki..."

"Shut up, Mizuki. I'm not talking to you."

"Yes. Yes, I knew that. I..." murmured Lavinia with trembling lips, then interrupted herself and burst into tears, sinking her face into her hands. "What have I done? What have I done?" she repeated incessantly between sobs, her body shaken by gasps and spasms.

Mizuki immediately hurried to sit beside her and wrap an arm around her back. "Don't be like that, Lav. Don't be like that."

"I put you... I put you in danger. What have I done!?"

"Lav, listen to me," Mizuki firmly grabbed her hands and pulled them away, holding them between her own so that she could see her face. "In your opinion, if I had known about this insight of yours, would I have changed my behavior in any way? You who know me so well, tell me: do you think I would have been more careful?"

The girl lifted her face, and widened her huge dark eyes, glistening from the tears that gushed forth copiously, but before she could answer from Loki came a dry, icy, derisive laugh. "Please spare us at least the dramatic scene," he said, shaking his head with barely suppressed anger that shone through the nervous tapping of his foot on the floor.

Leaning against the wall opposite the desk, Levi studied the unfolding of events. He did not trust himself to intervene or make the slightest gesture for fear of losing control, but with each caustic comment from Loki, with each recrimination, he sensed the part of himself that had rebelled from the first lines of Erwin's explanation finding some form of unhealthy satisfaction.

"Commander." After collecting Mizuki's furious look because of his last outburst against Lavinia, Loki gave his back to his companions and turned to Erwin, who sat placidly at his desk. "You knew, as did Lavinia, but you said nothing."

"I knew. To be more precise, I was the one who ordered Lavinia not to reveal anything about this to you, although I do not doubt that she would have been ready to disregard my instructions if she didn't share them."

"And why, pray tell, did you order to keep a trifle like this from us?"

"Because as commander I felt it was the most advisable decision for the best interests of the Corps," replied Erwin, his hands crossed in front of his chest and his eyes of a blue that, because of the room's poor lighting, resembled the waters of a stream after a violent downpour, murky and polluted because of debris precipitated from trees and carried downstream by the current.

"I see. Then allow me to state my position on the subject, Commander Erwin." With two firm strides, Loki walked to the front of the desk and stood there, motionless, towering over the worktable and the man he was killing with his gaze. "Last time I checked, I don't recall any of the four of us movingly offering our hearts to your foolish cause. We..."

"LOKI!" blurted Petra, moving a step in his direction; the further reproaches that were already dancing on the tip of the girl's tongue, however, died under the almost disgusted gaze Loki laid on her for a moment before returning it to its target.

"The four of us stay here and cooperate with you because it suits us, I want to make that very clear. We are not soldiers, we are ninjas. And I don't give a shit about what you think is advisable or not for the Corps, or for the common good. Nothing, do I make myself clear? My comrades for me come first. Mizuki comes first."

The girl stared at him wide-eyed, for once speechless and unable to articulate any of her usual light and irreverent comments, which always proved to be an effective remedy for dampening even the most tense of atmospheres.

"I'll give you one more chance, commander," hissed Loki, bending his torso forward slightly as if to reinforce the threatening tone he had imprinted on his voice, vibrant with anger and outrage. "Just one. If I find out that you are hiding anything else from us that could endanger this fool's life, I swear to you that I will take her out of here right now, even if I have to smack her on the head, tie her up and drag her away like a salami, and you will never see us again. Do I make myself clear?"

Erwin did not move except for an imperceptible twitching of his fingers, but irritation oozed copiously from the rigid pose in which his mighty figure was contracted, tinging the atmosphere around him. "Crystalline," he articulated dryly, without looking away from Loki.

Loki nodded, seemingly satisfied by the tension caused in the commander. "The same goes for you, Lavinia," he added, and turned toward the couch on which the girl sat. "I know you think you're smarter than Amado and me combined, but if I find out you've put her in danger again I swear I'll throw you off the walls."

The threat toward Lavinia was the straw that broke the camel's back. With an indignant cry, Mizuki sprang to her feet, shaken by tremors and with clenched fists. "Enough, Loki! Now you're really going too far!"

Even Loki, however, seemed to be waiting for nothing more than Mizuki's intrusion to really get wild. "Oh, you knock it off! If I get so pissed off it's because you don't! Someone out there tried to kill you twice..."

"We don't know if he was aiming at me..."

"Fuck you, Mizuki! Fuck you for real! You're an Uchiha, it's mathematical that he was aiming at you! You almost got killed, but you don't give a shit! Does that seem like a normal reaction to you?! You didn't used to be like this!"

"Loki..." Amado took a step in his comrade's direction, an warning echoing in that call, triggered by the rather blatant intent to prevent him from continuing on that slope and saying something he might regret.

"You used to be normal! You used to care about yourself! You've always been a loud-mouthed, irritating little slouch, but when someone disrespected you or hurt you, you could get angry. You would get angry, you would cry, you would get fucking angry, just like normal people do! Now a giant could step on you and you'd even apologize to him! What the fuck is your problem?!"

Mizuki, machine-gunned by the lashing cries of Loki, who, red-faced with rage, had pushed Amado out of his way so that no obstacle stood between him and the object of his wrath, peered at him pale and dumbfounded.

"In fact, maybe I should ask what the fuck happened. It's since that mission that you've changed! What the fuck happened when Rei..."

"LOKI, STOP!"

The cry burst out like a yelp from Mizuki's chest, and that short but disturbing sound was enough to silence him. She had brought her open hands in front of her face, now devoid of any trace of color, as if she wanted to spare those present a distressing and revolting sight.

A troubled silence fell over the room. No one had ever seen her pleading like that, she who never took anything seriously, she who always hid her pain under piles of superficial and irreverent remarks.

"Stop, please..."

Loki stared at her with widened eyes, his fists still clenched in a steel grip, as still as a spring-loaded soldier whose charge has suddenly ended. He lowered his head, with a rush of shame, but his fingers twitching in anger did not hint at wanting to untangle themselves.

Rei?

What on earth was a Rei?

No, no way it was an object.

Levi thinned his eyes into two slits, shifting them from Loki to Mizuki in search of a clue.

To reduce her to that state, it could only be a person.

Rei.

Was it a male or female name?

Who was Rei?

What had happened, what had he done to her, for the mere mention of his name to bend her that way, like a twig exposed to the whims of a lashing current, and wring out yelps similar to those of a freshly beaten dog?

"Look," Hanje said at that point, after wandering her gaze over everyone present. "It's been two endless days, which have ended absurdly. We're all tried. Let's go rest for the time being; we'll talk about the matter again tomorrow, with a clear head."

"Good idea," assented Erwin, who was eager to get the hand grenade ready to explode represented by the co-presence in his study of that set of dangerous elements out of the way.

Slowly and in religious silence, the soldiers pulled themselves to their feet, one by one, and marched in procession out of the commander's office. Hanje, who was closing the line, stopped at the threshold and shot a questioning glance at Levi, still leaning with arms crossed over his chest. The captain, without taking his gray eyes off Erwin, shook his head slightly, and Hanje understood. By now she knew them well enough to guess that the two men had some business to discuss. In private.

She walked out, closed the door, and left them alone.

Neither spoke for some time. Levi continued to stand motionless, Erwin working on the reports strewn across his desk.

The commander suddenly broke the silence. "Well? Is there anything I can do for you, Levi?"

"You know." A dry, unappealable reply, typical of a man who does not like to waste time.

"Yes, I know." Erwin put his pen down on the desk shelf and finally gave Levi his attention. "Honestly said, though, I don't have time to waste on this."

The gray blades thinned into a slit from which erupted flashes of annoyance.

"Don't look at me like that. What do you expect? For me to throw you into detention like a recruit who can barely put on the device? And for what, anyway? To be laughed at by the entire Corps, without this punishment doing any good? Because we both know that's the way it is. That, detention or not, you would do it again and again, without a second thought if the need arose."

No answer from the other side. Levi had never liked to get lost in pointless comments, and denying the evidence fit right into that category.

"There is a very specific reason why it is forbidden to sleep with subordinates. Sex deepens the bonds between people, and inhibits the brakes triggered by the rational part of the human brain. In the Gendarmerie, this rule serves to prevent - albeit without any success - undeserved career advancement from occurring; with us, to ensure that I can rely on the fact that my officers, outside the Walls, will follow my orders without being guided by emotion. " the commander said.

"Don't start with the fucking lecture, Erwin. I didn't..."

Erwin Smith never yelled. He always maintained an attitude of unflappable calm, and it was this that, in the eyes of his subordinates, gave him the authority indispensable to a leader and, at the same time, engendered in them an abysmal reverential awe. Even on that occasion he did not raise the tone of his voice, but the vibrant vehemence of his words forced even a man of Levi's caliber into silence.

"No, you didn't sleep with her, Levi, I know. The way you look at her in certain contexts says a lot about that. Which is even worse. Do you realize that you've been making up absurd excuses to punish her in order to spend time with her?" Bending his torso forward, Erwin leaned in Levi's direction, as if daring him to contradict the latest statement. "You two are absurd, really. You have done things in the wrong order: you are involved more than I can tolerate without anything having happened between you at all, and the result has been seen. Making her believe that you were in danger was enough to feed her an absurd story. You, on the other hand..."

Erwin froze, and made an annoyed gesture with his hand at the very thought.

Even without the need to recall that unfortunate affair in words, it took little for him to bring to his mind each and every step of it: one moment, Levi condescended to obey his order, and operated the device to follow him in retreat; the next, he abruptly reversed direction, as if possessed, without addressing a single word to him.

"I have no desire to discuss it again. I will not punish you Levi; I have no interest in doing so. No, what I want is for you to find a solution to the problem."

Levi tightened his lips. A solution. What a fucking joke. Did he really believe, Erwin, that if he had a way out of this he wouldn't have taken care of it long ago?

"How are you going to do it? I don't know. Do I care? No." The commander, having lifted his torso again, retrieved his pen and resumed writing thick, neat sentences on the paper laid before him. "Fuck her, marry her, get her pregnant, break all relations with her, get with her best friend. I don't care how, as long as it never happens again that you disobey one of my orders to save her. Never again, do I make myself clear?"

Silence fell in the room, interrupted only by the sound of the steel tip of the pen rubbing against the paper. The talk was over, and not even if Levi had been tearing up the office furniture would Erwin Smith have reopened it.

So the captain, prey to even deeper irritation, had no choice but to dismiss his pose as a fake street bully and take his leave. At the very least, he decided to emphasize his dissatisfaction by slamming the door so hard that chunks of plaster came off the wall.

Erwin Smith sighed, but the partial demolition of his office seemed the lesser evil of the day, and an almost inevitable outcome of the thorny talks he had been having with his subordinates; matters of which, at least for that night, he had his pockets full.

Loki could shout and rail; Levi could slam doors so hard that the wall almost collapsed.

To him, as a commander called upon to keep calm and set an example at all times, none of those privileges were granted; so at least they should leave him alone while he tried to distract himself from the mess that had erupted during the expedition with work.

His prayers, however, remained punctually unanswered in the upper floors because, after nearly an hour of peace, a light touch at the door distracted him from the papers he was writing.

"Come in," he said, and Mizuki slipped like an eel into the room.

There, perfect. She was all it took to end that forgettable day on a high note.

The embodiment of why Loki had been on the verge of punching him, and Levi had literally gone mad.

"Commander, I regret to disturb you at this hour while you're working," announced the girl, delivering each word with thoughtful composure.

Polite, obsequious language: a very bad sign.

"I really apologize for my disrespect..."

Apology, even: the announcement of a catastrophe.

"... But I wanted to talk to you about this matter as soon as possible, because I would like to leave tomorrow itself, if possible." Mizuki joined her hands behind her back and, rocking her torso slightly, finally dropped the bombshell for which she had shown up at two o'clock in the morning in his office. "I need a leave of absence, commander. I must to leave Trost for a while."

Erwin Smith tilted his bust and leaned back in his chair. "Sit down," he invited her with a nod, and intertwined his hands on his belly.

That was shaping up to be a long night.

.

The next morning, when the Survey Corps woke up to put the pieces back together after yet another scouting that ended in a bloodbath, it didn't take long for the soldiers to notice that something was missing in the delicate balance that kept them from going insane from first to last.

As soon as they noticed, they feverishly tried to reconstruct the movements of the missing element in the equation, confronting each other, but without much success.

The previous night, under the pretext of the backlog of work waiting for her in the clinic, she had not returned to her room after the meeting in Erwin's office.

And the next morning, in HQ, all trace of her had been lost.

Theo's safety valve, Lavinia's center of the universe, Loki's cross, Gelgar's confident and executioner, Petra's guilty ally, Hanje's accomplice and admirer, Levi's problem to solve.

Mizuki had left Trost and no one had the faintest idea of where on earth she had gone.

.

.

Notes:

Good afternoon, everyone! I hope to find you well as always, and that the story developments have been interesting.
In this chapter, a few new but familiar characters (i.e., the real protagonists of AOT) appear, the painstakingly created harmony between the soldiers and the ninjas begins to crack, and we find out more about the mysterious enemies hunting Mizuki. PS: I took the fact that Marco's sleep preaches the weather, as always, from the AOT Short Stories; while that Reiner is older than Eren & Co. is confirmed in the info reported by the Character Guide and Wikipedia.
Regarding the episode that occurred in the expedition, let me make a few clarifications. The first: I wanted to give a glimpse of how much Levi now cares for Mizuki, how much their relationship has deepened as the months have passed and the time spent together has increased; thus, I asked myself: what is it that Levi would never do? Answer: as a soldier, disobey an order from Erwin just because it suits him. And indeed, the struggle between his sense of duty and his feelings, inside him, is harsh; he would like to stay true to himself and his inclinations, but he fails. He follows his instincts, and his instincts tell him to go for her. She's a necessity for him, something he cannot do without.
The second: I don't think Erwin is an asshole at all, on the contrary. He's always been one of my favorite characters because of the complexity and moral ambiguity in his personality; however, it was precisely this complexity and moral ambiguity that led me to believe that in such a situation, where the risk is to sacrifice himself and some of his best soldiers to save perhaps only one (Mizuki), he would make the decision to go back. And thus I wrote the episode.
By now, we are nearing the end of the first arc, and the time when the story will reconnect with the original plot, but we are still missing a couple of surprises, and the appearance of a few outstanding characters.
I thank those who were persistent enough to make it this far!
See you very soon!